Jaguars of Brazil - Dynamics,Lifestyle,Datas,Studies,Reports

[Balam]

(05-19-2020, 07:26 PM)Dark Jaguar Wrote: The OnçaTalk live yesterday was fantastic.

I am gonna translate it.

they talked about jaguars genetic origins as well as the other big cats.

 Jaguars are genetically similar to leopards and lions. Eduardo was part of a group of researchers on a study involving 7 countries that made all genetic sequencial of jaguars and other big cats. jaguars have ancestors traces of more than 4 million years. They compared jaguars genomes with other cats specially pantherine cats and they solved  the evolutionary relationships of these species and estimated for how long they separated and they discovered there were many hibridization in the past, these species mated among themselves in the past and the genomes nowadays are mosaics of different evolutionary stories so there are pieces of the Jaguars genomes that are more related to Lions, other peices are more related to Leopards so these three species specifically are very similar genetically they diverged in less time around 2 to 3 million years which is quite recent and they have been in a moment they mated after separation.
Not necessarily these mixes and matings affected these differences on their looking,fisiology,behaviour,ecology.

These 3 species got many resemblances and many differences. the resemblances  the ancestors of the 3 species had and are still kept for example the coat, the leopard and jaguar probably kept its ancestors and the lion's changed, that makes sense and these are some of the things we are studying as well.

In the first article they discovered there were regions in the genome that looked to be fruit of exchanges between jaguar and lion and these regions apperead natural selection on the jaguar in favour of characteristics that were present on the individuals they analysed.
 
They're still working more on this to find out more.




In the Atlantic forest they already detected evidences of loss of genetic variability in fragmented populations who suffers fragmentations that population get small and the animals become relatives to one another with little individuals they mate between themselves and start to be more alike genetically and the fragmentations start to be more different randomly.

In their first genomic analysis of wild animals from many regions of Brazil they finding evidences of variability loss, parts of genomes are equal with no variability meaning the ancestors like fathers and grandfathers were relatives. Genetically variability loss would lead jaguars to disappear. Populations with little or 0 Genetically variability have less adaptation conditions to environmental changes, if a new lethal disease occurs the jaguars with all equal individuals they will all die. So Atlantic forest situation is very worrying.

So yeah @OncaAtrox like I said yesterday its better to wait for the population rebuild in Atlantic Forest to get those base weights which will be hard and long process.



Onçafari made a mercury ( element ) research through jaguars furs. And they compared the amount of mercury in the northern region of pantanal ( porto jofre ) and southern pantanal region all at same time, same year to not have natural interferences. They found a huge amount of mercury In the northern region 40% more mercury than in southern region cause there's alot of gold mining. on an in depth study to continue this study its possible to discover if there's  genetic modifications in the future but so far there's not problems. Just imagine the amount of mercury People in the region who consume fish,caimans could have. They also made diseases researches of parasites on horses/capybaras/jaguars and maybe humans. parasites related to ticks found on dogs/bovines of the area so they make these studies to understand the role of these diseases in nature.


They talked about the little population of caatinga jaguars and how small they are 30-40kg and even Caatinga Pumas sometimes are larger than Caatinga Jaguars with some of their preys being rodents, deers.... 

Note: regarding Caatinga Puma/Jags That's very interesting Just like I had mentioned this a few months ago that if there's a place with the smallest differences in size/dimensions between jags and pumas this place is in Caatinga.






Cerrado jaguars population is vunerable and its decaying theres risk of extinction but there's conservation projects in that region to avoid its extinction in that region.




Pampas jags as we all know they're extinct.



They also talked about other stuff like:



People hunting jaguar's preys causing impacts on jaguars/human conflicts.



Melanism (dark coat) genes on jaguars is dominat whereas on leopards is recessive.




They witnessed jaguars carrying preys up trees.



Trees shared by jaguars/pumas and other animals.



Eyewitness of wild Jaguar and wild Puma fight.



Jaguar predation on dogs.



Amazonic jags prey on monkeys up trees during flooded seasons.



Jaguar predation on Boar: jags tend to predate only on small boars and avoid the adult ones they don't have accounts of jaguars predating on adult boars they're way too aggressive. ( just imagine how aggressive a 300kg Javapig would be like )


They're helping bring jaguars to Argentina in Berá wich is very similar to the brazilian pantanal but jaguars there were extinct so there are a few brazilian jaguars being shipped for that area in Argentina ( the ones I know of was a female and I think Jatobazinho male was one of them too ).


They also talked about one fact that is always repeated for those who don't know, there is no such thing as melanistic/black Pantanal jaguars, there's no scientific evidences of black pantanal jags and nobody never saw one at all. But there's melanistic jaguars in all other brazilian biomes Cerrado/Caatinga/Pantanal/Amazon/Atlantic Forest or maybe Pampas when there were jags.
They're studying why there's melanistic jags in some places and not in others.


Jaguars have many connectivity genetically but it doesn't mean they're identical. they also got small differences and unique characteristics similar to humans the level of genetic differences in humans between continents is little. So are with jaguars they aren't that different but got their own characteristics with small differences in genes which could probably be because of adaptation in different regions for example Amazon/Pantanal it have to do with deseases as well.


Morphologic external differences from one biome to the other: They studying these genes and look for these differences and there are some genes they're studying that seemed to have showed significant differences between the different biomes and now they figuring out what these genes do and to see the differences among the biomes.


Jaguar's bite strength: Of all big cats jaguar got the strongest bite force in terms of force measurements and strength of the canines and there's a hypothesis lauched 30 years ago it may have to do with jaguas adaptation to eat caiman and turtle with an extraodinary bite force, and through the genoma article, jaguars with prey selection different than other species jaguars got genes involved on the facial Skull development and other genes that showed jaguar adaptation that are involved on forelimbs development, jags got very strong forelimbs so it could have to do with the adaptation to predate on caimans and turtles throughout the jaguar's evolutionary history so its a very interesting discovery on the article we published and it open the doors for more studies for example is it equal in all regions? The jaguar we analysed is exclusive from Pantanal. And all these questions I hope will keep studying in the coming years.


Unfortunately due to tiger population decay the easterns their attention now are to America looking for jaguars, there was a case in Bolivia of more than 180 jaguar canines being shipped overseas, there was a case of an illegal trade of jaguar skulls that the brazilian Federal Police seized alot of jaguar skulls in northern Pará-Brazil in 2018-2019. The reason is the same ( tiger parts, rhino parts ) for medicine. In Brazil its still unknown how it works but the conservation,IBAMA and enviormental entities are trying to find out but so far the biggest issue in Brazil is retaliation poaching in agricultural areas and trophy hunting.


Study and usage of natural corridors and entities team up like Pró Carnívoros and Panthera to know the resemblances and differences between northern pantanal jaguars and southern pantanal jaguars to know how the jaguar venture crossing up north whether they go through the Paraguay River or if they go through Central Pantanal the idea is there must be a natural conexion between the populations and groups of jaguars and there may no be need of reintroduction what we aim is natural corridors.


Importance of radio collars: it shows us in a studying area the environment jaguars like so we know how jaguars  use the area and what are the necessary areas cause the progress is coming and the animal is losing environment.


There were other infos as well in the Onçafari live and I can't wait for today's live, it will have a different topic, I am really looking forward to it.

So much amazing information to unpack here. I'm especially surprised that jaguars avoided predation on adult boar when they have no problem killing tapirs of a similar size, even the Central American ones, maybe they just rather choose less dangerously prey if they have access to them, I read recently that overall tapirs were avoided too. Do you know by any chance if predation on feral buffalo was discussed?

The issue of genetic diversity is worrisome, I remain optimist about the work these conservational groups are making to increase their access to corridors, hopefully they will start reintroducing natural larger prey info the biome as well.

What were details of the fight with the cougars? I'm assuming the jaguar would be dominant but who knows. Reply