The sitatunga (Tragelaphus spekii), sometimes called the marshbuck, is a swamp-dwelling medium-sized antelope found throughout central Africa, centering on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo, Cameroon, parts of Southern Sudan, Equatorial Guinea, Burundi, Ghana, Botswana, Rwanda, Zambia, Gabon, the Central African Republic, Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya. The sitatunga is mostly confined to swampy and marshy habitats. Here they occur in tall and dense vegetation as well as seasonal swamps, marshy clearings in forests, riparian thickets and mangrove swamps. Taxonomy and genetics The scientific name of the sitatunga is Tragelaphus spekii. The species was first described by the English explorer John Hanning Speke in 1863. Speke first observed the sitatunga at a lake named "Little Windermere" (now Lake Lwelo, located in Kagera, Tanzania). In his book Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile, Speke called the animal "nzoé" (Kiswahili name for the animal) or "water-boc" (due to its resemblance to the waterbuck). The scientific name has often been misstated as T. spekei, and either Speke or Sclater is referred to as the binomial authority. Speke had stated in a footnote in his book that the species had been named Tragelaphus spekii by English zoologist Philip Sclater. However, according to the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (Article 50.1.1) and the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, that acknowledge the person who first described the species, simply declaring Sclater as the authority in a footnote is insufficient to recognise him as the author. Hence, Speke was recognised as the correct authority and T. spekii (where spekii is the genitive of the Latinised "Spekius") was considered the correct name for the species. The sitatunga is placed under the genus Tragelaphus and in the family Bovidae. In 2005, Sandi Willows-Munro of the University of KwaZulu-Natal (Durban) carried out a mitochondrial analysis of the nine Tragelaphus species. mtDNA and nDNA data were compared. The results showed that sitatunga plus bongo (T. eurycerus) form a monophyletic clade with the mountain nyala (T. buxtoni) and bushbuck (T. scriptus). The greater kudu (T. strepsiceros) split from this clade approximately 8.6 million years ago. Within Tragelaphus, the bushbuck, bongo, sitatunga and nyala (T. angasii) are particularly close relatives. The bushbuck and sitatunga are genetically similar enough to hybridise. Hybrids between bongo and sitatunga have proved to be fertile. The sitatunga is more variable in its general characters than any other member of the