Localities and microsatellites
We analysed 1676 animals from 34 localities throughout the buffalo’s range (Figure 1 and Table 1). These localities span approximately 37 degrees of latitude (± 4500 km from Bénoué NP in Cameroon to HiP in South Africa) and 27 degrees of longitude (± 3000 km from Lopé NP in Gabon to Tsavo NP in Kenya). Samples from Bénoué NP and Lopé NP (separated by ± 1000 km) in central Africa and from Mana Pools NP and Nyakasanga (separated by ± 55 km) in southern Africa were pooled because of small sample size. Intermediate coordinates, weighted by sample size, were used for these pooled samples.
We used previously published genotype data of the following seventeen microsatellites: BM0719 , BM1824 , BM3517 ,BM3205 , BM4028 , CSSM019 , DIK020 ,ETH010 , ETH225 , ILSTS026 , INRA006,INRA128 , SPS115 , TGLA057 , TGLA0159 ,TGLA227 and TGLA263 (Epps et al., 2013; Ernest et al., 2012; Greyling et al., 2008; Heller, Lorenzen, Okello, Masembe, & Siegismund, 2008; Smitz et al., 2014; van Hooft et al., 2018; van Hooft et al., 2019; van Hooft et al., 2014; van Hooft, Groen, & Prins, 2000). Data for all seventeen microsatellites were only available for KNP and HiP (microsatellite set A in Table 2). Five smaller subsets, consisting of 2-11 microsatellites, were available for the other populations (microsatellite set B-F in Table 2). Raw microsatellite data from microsatellite sets D and F are provided in earlier publications (Epps et al., 2013; Smitz et al., 2014), while those from the remaining sets are available from the Dryad Digital Repository (van Hooft et al., 2020).