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

[BorneanTiger]

(06-23-2019, 09:26 AM)Greatearth Wrote: This is why I don't view tiger subspecies are 2, neither Siberian tiger (Panthera tigris altaica) and Caspian tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) are the same subspecies. It is on The Caspian Tiger #33.

How is it possible that tigers lived in the Korean peninsula (Seoul or Busan) and Russian Far East (Vladivostok) can be the same subspecies as tigers lived in far west of Asia, or few individual tigers reached even far places as western Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine?
Whoever did research on that paper just wasted their grant money and published worthless information. However, I can understand that Caspian tigers lived in the central Asia were genetically very similar to Siberian tigers. It still won't cause any problem to releasing Siberian tigers in Central Asia since Caspian tigers are extinct. The same for releasing Sumatran tigers in Java Island, but situation of Java is even worse than Sumatra Island. Bali is absolutely impossible. Sad reality of Asia continent.

Few posts (and years) ago I discussed this idea about subspecies vs species. Biologists are still arguing how to define "subspecies". Reptiles, amphibians, fishes, and small birds and mammals are easy to define as species/subspecies since their can't move far wide as large mammals. Animals like tigers are different. That's why biologists are arguing how to define tiger subspecies. Bengal tigers living in western Myanmar/India/Bangladesh are suppose to be more similar to Indochinese tigers in eastern Myanmar compared to Bengal tigers in western/southern India, and Indochinese tigers lived in eastern Myanmar are more similar to Bengal tigers in western Myanmar compared to Indochinese tigers in Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos. Indochinese tigers lived in right above of Malayan Peninsula are definitely more similar to Malayan tigers in northern Malayan Peninsula, while Malayan tigers lived in southern Malayan Peninsula and Singapore Island are probably more closely related to Sumatran tigers. The same for Sumatran tigers, Javan tigers, Bali tigers, South China tiger, and Chinese tigers lived in mainland China. It is very difficult to conclude exact "subspecies" and boundaries in their range map. The same for any other large and medium size animals. That is why some biologists are just view it as 2 subspecies since tigers are endangered.

However, I am absolutely against and disagree with 2 subspecies since people will start mixing tigers if it happens. I personally view any biologists believe tiger subspecies are 2 are highly ignorant and nonsense like Kitchner guy. However, I can understand their point of view on 2 tiger subspecies if you study genomic. It is very difficult to defining subspecies on large animals unless they are living in islands. I hope those people are not go far as doing stupid thing like releasing one tiger into places where other tiger subspecies live.

Different definitions exist for the term 'subspecies', one of which is that two members of the same species are genetically and geographically distinct from each other (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/subspecies). If you go by genetics, then either the Caspian and Siberian tigers will have to be treated as the same subspecies, or the Bengal tigers will have to be divided into different subspecies, because the Caspian tiger is more closely related to the Siberian tiger than say a Sundarban Bengal tiger would be to a northern Bengal tiger in northern India, Nepal or Bhutan: 

Luo et al.: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/articl...ne.0004125 
   
Figure 2. Phylogenetic relationships among tiger mtDNA haplotypes inferred using 4079 bp of concatenated mtDNA sequences (see Table S3).

Singh et al.: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/article...8846.g002/ 
   
Median-joining network created from four mtDNA genes (cytb, ND2, ND5 and ND6) (in total, 2600 bp) depicting genetic relationship between all haplotypes found in tigers.

(a) haplotypes found in Sundarbans tigers (in black) and all other six tiger subspecies (in yellow and green color, from Luo et al. 2004) [2], (b) all haplotypes found in Bengal tiger populations from this study and Mondol et al. [22]. Pink: North India, Yellow: Central India, Blue: South India, and Green: Sundarbans. The sizes of the circles are proportional to the haplotype frequencies.

Sundarban Bengal tiger: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:..._Tiger.jpg 
   

Northern Bengal tiger at Jim Corbett National Park, northern India: https://www.dhikalaforestlodge.in/cobett...-park.html 
   

Stuffed Caspian tiger from Iran which was killed after attacking livestock near Tbilisi in what is now Georgia, South Caucasus: http://kavehfarrokh.com/iran-and-central...the-1930s/ 
   

Amur tiger: http://overpoise.com/amur-tiger.html/amu...ter-forest 
   

If you go by climatological differences, this is where things can get complicated because there are both similarities and differences between Amur and Caspian tigers, like there would be between Himalayan Bengal tigers and Bengal tigers in hot jungles. On one hand, the temperate region inhabited by the Siberian tiger is different to the reed thickets of Central Asia or the tugai forests of West Asia, especially that surrounding the interesting river called 'Tigris' in Mesopotamia (mostly Iraq, but with parts of what are now Syria and Turkey), and so: 

Caspian tiger hunted by Soviet soldiers in a reed thicket of Central Asia, probably near the River Panj, in the early 1930s: http://kavehfarrokh.com/iran-and-central...the-1930s/ 
   

The Tigris River near Mosul in Iraq, roughly where a tiger, possibly from southeastern Anatolia (Turkey), was shot in 1887 (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...0.10637583): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:TigrisRiver.JPG 
   

On the other hand, both the Caspian and West Siberian tigers appear to have occurred in the region of Lake Baikal in eastern Siberia (https://archive.org/stream/mammalsofsov2...rch/Baikal), and even apart from that, the Caspian tiger would have inhabited fairly temperate regions, such as northern Iran and the Caucasus, compared to the hot jungles of South and Southeast Asia, except that the Himalayan region of South Asia, where the Bengal tiger is present, is also fairly temperate: 

Map of distribution of tiger subspecies by Vratislav Mazák, page 3: https://web.archive.org/web/201203091255...1-0001.pdf
   

Lake Baikal in south-central Russia, north of Mongolia: https://www.livescience.com/57653-lake-b...facts.html
   

Caspian tiger killed in northern Iran in the 1940s: http://www.tigers.ca/Foundation%20overview/caspian2.htm 
   

A Persian leopard in the snow at Golestan National Park, northern Iran, where the country's last known tiger were sighted in the 1950s (https://books.google.com/books?id=t2EZCS...&q&f=false): https://www.earthtouchnews.com/conservat...ast-stand/ 
   

Himalayan Bengal tiger in the snow at Bhutan: https://www.iucn.org/news/species/201707...ers-bhutan 
    Reply