ON THE EDGE OF EXTINCTION - D - THE LEOPARD (Panthera pardus)

[BorneanTiger]

(05-22-2019, 11:19 PM)BorneanTiger Wrote:

(05-22-2019, 07:21 PM)peter Wrote: BORNEAN TIGER

You're on of the few who uses his own words to write posts. On top of that, nearly all posts have good info. Be sure it's much appreciated.

The disadvantage of writing your own posts is it often results typos, errors and the occasional slip of the tongue. This the reason I often have to edit long posts (referring to typos in particular).

I thought I saw a typo in your interesting last post, but I could be wrong here. I'm referring to your remark on the Caucasus located west of the Black Sea. You of course mean to the west of the Caspian. 

One question regarding Arabian leopards. Is the population completely isolated? Any research being conducted at the moment?

Actually, there is more than one population of Arabian leopards. Ignoring the possibly extinct population of the Hajar Mountains of eastern UAE and northern Oman (http://www.catsg.org/fileadmin/fileshari...irates.pdf), there is a population at the Dhofar Mountains of southern Oman (https://www.earthtouchnews.com/conservat...in-danger/), which are contiguous with the Hadhramaut Mountains of eastern Yemen, which are in turn contiguous with the Sarawat or Sarat Mountains of western Yemen and KSA (Saudi Arabia). The Sarawat stretch from southwest Yemen to northwest KSA on the border of the southern Levant (which has leopards: http://www.yemenileopard.org/files/cms/r...eopard.pdf), and are the longest and highest of the Arabian ranges, further divisible into the Haraz (southwest Yemen), Asir (southwestern KSA), and Hijaz (western KSA) subranges, with the Hijazi subrange having a subrange of its own, the Midian Mountains on the border of northwestern KSA and the southern Levant.

Judging from the work of the Cat Specialist Group (http://www.yemenileopard.org/files/cms/r...eopard.pdf), it seems that different populations are isolated from each other, but this would be based on confirmed sightings, and the only population which would have been likely isolated from others, historically, would have been at the Hajar Mountains, since this range is separated from other ranges of the peninsula, which form a chain extending from southern Oman and Yemen to northwestern KSA on the border with the southern Levant: 

The Arabian Leopards of Oman by Andrew Spalton and Hadi Al Hikmani, illustrated by Vicky White: https://www.earthtouchnews.com/conservat...puts-arabi

*This image is copyright of its original author

Forward from (https://wildfact.com/forum/topic-african...2#pid83142), you may notice from the map above that the Sinai Peninsula, in the Asian part of what is now Egypt, is treated as being part of the former range of the Arabian subspecies. Actually, that peninsula had a subspecies or population of its own, the Sinai leopard (Panthera pardus jarvisi), which was proposed by the British zoologist Reginald Innes Pocock in 1932 (https://zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wi....tb01085.x), based on a skin from the Peninsula, a land-bridge between mainland Egypt (where an African leopard would have been spotted in Elba Protected Area in the southeast in 2014: https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/mamm.20...5-0089.xml) to the west and the Arabian Peninsula and Levant (where the Arabian leopard would be present: https://www.earthtouchnews.com/conservat...in-danger/) to the east, which is treated as part of Asia, thus rendering Egypt a transcontinental country like Turkey, Russia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan: https://sciencetrends.com/what-continent...cially-in/

https://www.britannica.com/place/Sinai-Peninsula

*This image is copyright of its original author

Stuffed Sinai leopard at the Zoological Museum of Giza Zoological Museum, Egypt: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:...Museum.jpg

*This image is copyright of its original author

Exactly whether or not the Sinai leopard is a subspecies, or part of a subspecies, is a matter of controversy. Due to a lack of tissue samples, in 1996, Miththapala et al. (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/...10041115.x) subsumed it to the Caucasian or Persian subspecies (Panthera pardus ciscaucasia syn. Panthera pardus saxicolor, now Panthera pardus tulliana according to the Cat Specialist Group, 2017, pages 73–75: https://repository.si.edu/bitstream/hand...sAllowed=y), and then in 2001, Uphyrkina et al. (http://www.biosoil.ru/files/00001386.pdf) subsumed it to the Arabian subspecies (Panthera pardus nimr). As I mentioned here (https://wildfact.com/forum/topic-on-the-...2#pid68902), the CSG also said that the Sinai and Arabian leopards could be the same subspecies as African leopards (Panthera pardus pardus), and all other leopards in Asia and European Russia (which has Caucasian leopards (Panthera pardus ciscausia / tulliana)), including the Sri Lankan leopard (Panthera parsus kotiya), could be one subspecies (Panthera pardus fusca), with the exception of the Javan leopard (Panthera pardus melas). Reply