Southern Pampas Cat

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Southern Pampas Cat
Leopardus pajeros 20101006.jpg

Southern Pampas Cat ( Leopardus pajeros )

Systematics
Order : Predators (Carnivora)
Subordination : Feline (Feliformia)
Family : Cats (Felidae)
Subfamily : Small cats (Felinae)
Genre : Leopard cats ( leopardus )
Type : Southern Pampas Cat
Scientific name
Leopardus pajeros
( Desmarest , 1816)

The southern pampas cat ( Leopardus pajeros ) (English: Southern pampas cat) is a small cat species from the genus of the pardle cats , which occurs in southern South America east of the Andes from northwest Argentina ( province of Catamarca ) to the Strait of Magellan .

features

The body size of the southern Pampas cat is variable and ranges from small animals with a head-trunk length of about 46 centimeters and a tail length of 23 centimeters to large animals with a head-trunk length of about 75 centimeters and a tail length of 29 centimeters .

The southern pampas cat has a gray-brown basic color. The sides of the body are unpatterned or provided with indistinct dark brown or dark yellow-brown oblique lines. Black, dark brown, yellow-brown, or dark yellow stripes can be seen on the light throat. One is always significantly wider than the rest. The tail is brown-gray and not ringed. The tip of the tail is not set off in color from the rest of the tail.

Way of life

Little information is available about the way of life of the species. It feeds on predatory rodents such as burrowers (Cricetidae) and comb rats ( Ctenomys ), which according to a survey in the Argentine province of Mendoza make up about 92% of the total diet. The food spectrum is supplemented by small lizards and birds, including nest-young penguins and penguin eggs.

Systematics

The species was first scientifically described in 1816 by the French zoologist Anselme Gaëtan Desmarest under the name Felis pajeros . For a long time it was considered a subspecies of Leopardus colocolo . The Spanish zoologist Rosa García-Perea divided the pampas cat into three species in 1994 ( Lynchailurus pajeros , L. colocolo and L. braccatus ) and gave them the generic name Lynchailurus , which was introduced by the Russian naturalist Nikolai Severtzov . In 1999, Johnson and colleagues were unable to understand the species separation in a molecular biological study of small cats in South America. Although they found clusters within the examined samples of the Pampas cats, which show the closer relationship of regionally close groups of cats, these did not coincide with the species described by García-Perea. The division into three species was adopted in the Mammal Species of the World , a standard work on mammalogy published in 2005, but the three species were placed in the genus of leopard cats ( Leopardus ). In the Handbook of the Mammals of the World , another standard work, whose volume of predators appeared in 2009, Leopardus pajeros was again assigned as a subspecies of the Pampas cat and the specialist group of the international environmental protection association ( IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Specialist Group ) lists L. pajeros as Subspecies of the Pampas cat. stresses in a revision of the cat system published in 2017, however, that some subspecies of the Pampas cat could receive the status of independent species in the future after further investigations. In a revision of the Pampas cat group published in June 2020, the species status of the Southern Pampas cat was finally confirmed after five clades were found in the Pampas cat group that differed in skull morphology, coat color and genome and which also have different distribution areas. Felis pajeros crucina , under this name the British zoologist Oldfield Thomas described a cat that was collected by Charles Darwin in southern Patagonia in 1834 , is considered a synonym for Leopardus pajeros .

supporting documents

  1. ↑ a b c Fabio Oliveira do Nascimento, Jilong Cheng and Anderson Feijó (2020). Taxonomic revision of the pampas cat Leopardus colocola complex (Carnivora: Felidae): an integrative approach. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, XX, 1-37, doi: 10.1093 / zoolinnean / zlaa043
  2. ^ A b Rosa García-Perea: The Pampas Cat Group (Genus Lynchailurus Severtzov, 1858) (Carnivora: Felidae), a Systematic and Biogeographic Review. American Museum Novitates 3096, 1994; Pp. 1-36.
  3. ↑ César M. García Esponda, Joaquín D. Carrera1, Germán J. Moreira, Ada V. Cazón, Luciano JM De Santis: Microvertebrados depredados por Leopardus pajeros (Carnivora: Felidae) en el sur de la Provincia de Mendoza, Argentina . Mastozoología neotropical 16 (2), 2009; Pp. 456-457.
  4. ^ Mel E. Sunquist & Fiona C. Sunquist: Family Felidae (Cats). Page 146 in Don E. Wilson , Russell A. Mittermeier : Handbook of the Mammals of the World - Volume 1 Carnivores. Lynx Editions, 2009, ISBN 978-84-96553-49-1
  5. ↑ Anselme Gaëtan Desmarest (1816) Chat, Felis, Linn., Briss., Schreb., Cuv. In: Nouveau dictionnaire d'histoire naturelle, appliquée aux arts, a l'agriculture, a l'économie rurale et domestique, a la médecine, etc. par une société de naturalistes et d'agriculteurs (nouv.ed.), Tome VI . Paris: Deterville, 73–123.
  6. ↑ Warren E. Johnson, Jill Pecon Slattery, Eduardo Eizirik, Jae-Heup Kim, Marilyn Menotti Raymond, Cristian Bonacic, Richard Cambre, Peter Crawshaw, Adauto Nunes, Héctor N. Seuánez, Miguael Angelo Martins Moreira, Kevin L. Seymour, Faiçal Simon, William Swansson, Stephen J. O'Brien: Disparate phylogeographic patterns of molecular genetic variation in four closely related South American small cat species. Molecular Ecology 8, 1999: S79-S94, doi: 10.1046 / j.1365-294X.1999.00796.x .
  7. ↑ Don E. Wilson & DeeAnn M. Reeder (Eds.): Leopardus in Mammal Species of the World. A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference (3rd ed).
  8. ↑ http://www.catsg.org/index.php?id=87
  9. ↑ Leopardus colocolo in the endangered Red List species the IUCN 2008. Posted by:. T. de Oliveira et al, 2008. Accessed January 24, 2009.
  10. ↑ Kitchener AC, Breitenmoser-Würsten Ch., Eizirik E., Gentry A., Werdelin L., Wilting A., Yamaguchi N., Abramov AV, Christiansen P., Driscoll C., Duckworth JW, Johnson W., Luo S. .-J., Meijaard E., O'Donoghue P., Sanderson J., Seymour K., Bruford M., Groves C., Hoffmann M., Nowell K., Timmons Z. & Tobe S. 2017. A revised taxonomy of the Felidae. The final report of the Cat Classification Task Force of the IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group. Cat News Special Issue 11, 80 pp.
  11. ↑ Oldfield Thomas (1901): New Neotropical mammals, with a note on the species of Reithrodon. Annals and Magazine of Natural History 7: 246-248