ON THE EDGE OF EXTINCTION - A - THE TIGER (Panthera tigris)

[tigerluver]

In a time where other species are being pushed for further division (i.e. giraffes and African lions), I find proposal to simplify classification of the tiger to be bold and unique. The underlying point behind the notion is that management of ~8 subspecies is too difficult and then they are able to find definitions of subspeciation that allow the subspeciation to be simplified. On one hand, the approach is pragmatic. Southeast Asia will probably lose its native tigers in the next century for a plethora of reasons that transcend poaching and habitat loss. The only subspecies that have an okay future as of now are the Amur, Bengal, and maybe Sumatran forms. By simplifying subspeciation, one day the gap in southeast Asia could be refilled without needing the discussion of the wrong genetics being reintroduced. On the other hand, the current premise of subspecies simplification is that there is too much overlap in DNA sequences. The authors in Wiltig et al. (2015) make a good point that clouded leopard subspecies lack these overlaps. However, the issue stands that authors diversifying subspecies today usually do not seem to call to attention such overlaps in their works. This means there is an underlying different in subspecies definition. As of now, zoology is still a bit spread apart. With upsides and downsides, there is no central body defining these terms across species and thus there is confusion. In my mind, the optimal approach would be to preserve each population nonetheless as it at the worst, cannot hurt. Plus, allopatric (sub)speciation exists and by conventional terms, the distant between Ussuri and India has been a barrier in itself for millenia, with or without a hybridizing region in China. Thus one could argue that the genotypic differences between the Bengal and Amur tigers that were attributed to being man-made by Wiltig et al. (2015) could also be simply attributed the barrier of distance. Nevertheless, the reality of the difficulty of this task is there and perhaps one day such discussion will be obsolete when tigers and humans can no longer coexist and the former disappears moreso than it already has. Reply