Styan's little panda

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Styan's little panda
Red Panda (4204836046) .jpg

Styan's red panda ( Ailurus styani )

Systematics
Order : Predators (Carnivora)
Subordination : Canine (Caniformia)
Superfamily : Marten relatives (Musteloidea)
Family : Ailuridae
Genre : Little Pandas ( Ailurus )
Type : Styan's little panda
Scientific name
Ailurus styani
Thomas , 1902

Styan's little panda ( Ailurus styani ) is a medium-sized mammal from the genus of the small or red pandas ( Ailurus ), which occurs in southern China in the western mountainous part of Sichuan and in the north of Yunnan . It is named after the British tea merchant and naturalist Frederick William Styan (1838–1934), who in 1897 collected the skin and skull of the first specimen made accessible to science.

features

Both types of small pandas reach head-body lengths of 50 to just over 70 cm, have a tail about 30 to 50 cm long and can reach a weight of three to six kilograms. The head is round, the muzzle is short. The fur on the back is chestnut brown, the belly, the front and rear legs are black. The soles of the paws are hairy. The females have eight teats. Styan's little panda has a significantly larger skull with a more arched forehead, a wider zygomatic arch and stronger teeth than the western little panda. The fur is a little darker and the winter fur is longer (up to 70 mm vs. 40–50 mm). The curling of the tail is more pronounced and the face is more reddish with smaller white spots than in the western lesser panda.

Habitat and way of life

Red - the distribution area of ​​the Western (light red) and Styan's Lesser Panda (dark red)
Styan's little panda

Styan's little panda is found in Sichuan and Yunnan in temperate forests at altitudes of 1500 to 4800 meters. Due to the north-south orientation of the mountains in Sichuan and Yunnan, the habitat of Styan's little panda is very rainy. Beeches , evergreen oaks (subgenus Cerris , section Cyclobalanopsis ) and walnut trees are the dominant trees in the forests. In the thick undergrowth there are numerous bamboo thickets and fallen trees, tree stumps and bushes allow the animals to climb to reach the leaves of the bamboo. Other mammals that occur in the habitat of Styan's little panda are the spotted giant sliding squirrel , the red dog , the collar bear , the red marten and the leopard . The giant panda also occurs in the north of the range . Pheasant-like , thrushes and flycatchers are numerous among the birds .

In the Wolong Nature Reserve and in the Fengtongzhai National Nature Reserve directly to the north , the territories of some more closely examined individuals were 0.94 to 3.43 km² in size and the daily distance traveled by the animals was between 235 and 461 meters. Bamboo is the panda's main food. The most important bamboo species for nutrition come from the genera Chimonocalamus , Phyllostachys and Thamnocalamus . Bamboo species with a high nutritional content, e.g. B. the Chinese mountain bamboo ( Arundinaria fargesii ) or Chimonobambusa tumidissinoda , and young shoots are preferred. Lichen, roots, small vertebrates, bird eggs and insects are also eaten.

Systematics

Styan's little panda was first scientifically described in 1902 by Oldfield Thomas as a subspecies of the little panda ( Ailurus fulgens ). The holotype is an adult male whose fur and skull were collected in June 1897 in northwestern Sichuan by FW Styan. The British-Australian mammalogue Colin Groves treated Styan's little panda and the nominate form , the western little panda, as two separate species in a monograph on the red pandas published in 2010 . In February 2020, a group of Chinese scientists spoke out in favor of giving both the nominate form and Styan's little panda the status of separate species. The two species were isolated from each other about 220,000 years ago as a result of glaciations in the penultimate glacial period ( Saale glacial period in Europe) and can be distinguished from one another both genetically and morphologically and in terms of their coloration. The boundary between the distribution areas of both species could be the Saluen mountain river .

Danger

The population of Styan's lesser panda declined by about 40% in China from 1960 to 2009, and the species disappeared from Guizhou , Gansu , Shaanxi, and Qinghai provinces . The reason was the loss and fragmentation of the habitat through deforestation, road construction, forest fires and poaching. In some areas of China, the people living there made hats from the fur of the animals, which were considered a lucky talisman for newly married couples. In the remaining habitat in China, Styan's red panda is found in 43 protected areas and is also protected by law.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f F. Wei, Z. Zhang (2009), p. 503.
  2. ^ A b O. Thomas (1902): On the Panda of Szechuen. Annals and Magazine of Natural History. Seventh Series. London: Taylor and Francis, Ltd. X: 251-252.
  3. ↑ a b Yibo Hu, Arjun Thapa, Huizhong Fan, Tianxiao Ma, Qi Wu, Shuai Ma, Dongling Zhang, Bing Wang, Min Li, Li Yan and Fuwen Wei. 2020. Genomic Evidence for Two Phylogenetic Species and Long-term Population Bottlenecks in Red Pandas. Science Advances. 6 (9); eaax5751. DOI: 10.1126 / sciadv.aax5751
  4. ^ RI Pocock (1941): Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma. Mammalia. - Volume 2. Taylor and Francis, Ltd., London, pp. 258-264.
  5. ↑ AM Glover (1938): The Mammals of China and Mongolia. American Museum of Natural History, New York, pp. 314-317.
  6. ↑ a b Ailurus fulgens & A. styani • Genomic Evidence for Two Phylogenetic Species and Long-term Population Bottlenecks in Red Pandas. Species new to Science, February 26, 2020.
  7. ^ A b c Miles S. Roberts, John L. Gittleman: Aliurus fulgens . In: Mammalian Species 222, 1984, p. 4. (Online as PDF )
  8. ↑ F. Wei, Z. Zhang (2009), p. 499.
  9. ↑ F. Wei, Z. Zhang (2009), p. 501.
  10. ↑ Colin Groves: The Taxonomy and Phylogeny of Ailurus. DOI: 10.1016 / B978-1-4377-7813-7.00007-0 in Angela R. Glatston: Red Panda: Biology and Conservation of the First Panda. William Andrew Publisher, 2010, ISBN 978-1437778137 .
  11. ↑ F. Wei, Z. Zhang (2009), p. 498.
  12. ↑ Gege Li: Red panda genes suggest there are actually two different species. In: New Scientist , February 26, 2020.
  13. ↑ Daniel Lingenhöhl: Not one cat bear, but two. In: Spektrum.de , February 28, 2020.
  14. ↑ a b F. Wei, Z. Zhang (2009), p. 502.
  15. ↑ F. Wei, Z. Feng, Z. Wang, J. Hu: Current distribution, status and conservation of wild red pandas Ailurus fulgens in China . In: Biological Conservation . 89, No. 89, 1999, pp. 285-291. doi : 10.1016 / S0006-3207 (98) 00156-6 .

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