Freak Felids - A Discussion of History's Largest Felines

[GrizzlyClaws]

(09-09-2018, 04:14 AM)GuateGojira Wrote:

(09-09-2018, 03:15 AM)GrizzlyClaws Wrote: For example, the animals like gorilla and clouded leopard all have twin species, could this be the case for the Pleistocene lion and Afro-Asiatic lion?

The Mainland clouded leopard and Sunda clouded leopard had been diverged over 1.6 million years, yet both species are still considered as clouded leopard, and same case for the eastern gorilla and western gorilla.

That is a good point, but also remember that is all related with Taxonomy and the point of view of the researcher. Remember that Cracraft et al. (1998) and Mazák & Groves (2006) using molecular and morphological studies and following the rules of the Phylogenetic Species Concept (PSC), they clasified all the island tigers as a completelly diferent species (not subspecies) ot tigers. However the last meeting of the UICN/SSC Cats Specialist Group, the island tigers are just "subspecies". So it depends of the people and the evaluation of the information.

Other example is the polar bears, some studies separate it from the brown bears for millions of years while othere give a separation of less than 300,000 years! And we know how diferent are the polar from the brown bears.

So, with a diference of at least 1.5 millions years, the spelaea/atrox groups should be a diferent species from leo and that is the final conclusion in Barnett et al. (2016) and for the moment, I follow that conclusion, especially when we see that King & Wallace in the document "Phylogenetics of Panthera, including Panthera atrox, based on craniodental characters" from 2014,  still found tiger afinities in Panthera atrox, which suggest primitive characteristics that Panthera spelaea lost and that Panthera leo lacks completelly.

The two separated species within a same genus should have enough genetic barrier that prevents them to produce the 100% healthy fertile offspring.

The Sunda tiger was a relatively distantly related subspecies from the Mainland tiger, since they had been genetically isolated from each other in the late Pleistocene. In comparison, the Mainland tigers had only been separated by the human intervention in the recent time, but genetically the Sunda tiger is not an outlier within the tiger genetic boundary.

Maybe the Pleistocene lion and Afro-Asiatic lion had already developed this unique strain of DNA that prevent them to produce the genetically flawless offspring, but still more viable than the cross hybrid like the liger. Reply