Modern weights and measurements on wild tigers

[GuateGojira]

(07-12-2022, 02:13 PM)acutidens150 Wrote: Hi Guate,
Are the tiger actually considered into two subspecies (Panthera Tigris Tigris on the mainland and Panthera Tigris Sondaica on the islands) or are they distributed into 5/6 subspecies? I'm asking because I've read many papers that had opposing views.

At this moment there is not a consensus. The Cat Specialist Group from the IUCN says that tigers are separated in two subspecies, however they also accepted that there is no concensus as some scientists support the view of more subspecies (Kitchener et al., 2017). Latter Liu et al. (2018) provided genetic evidence that it could be at least 5 subspecies of tigers at this moment.

Please check this link: https://wildfact.com/forum/topic-modern-...rs?page=58

There, in posts 863 and 864 a made a long analisys about the issues with the clasification of the subspecies of tigers and I reached to two conclutions:

* What means to have only two subspecies?
It means that we can use Indian tigers to repopulate Indochina, Malaysia and South China. Also provides "value" to the mix captive tigers that populate USA and other countries. While the idea will be good, actually it will create a mess if is not correctly used. For example, most of the captive tigers are a mix between Amur and Bengal tigers, and if we remember, these two populations are the most diverged since the Pleistocene and even under the new clasification they belong to two different conservation units, so the large captive tigers of USA are STILL useless for conservation, but I highly doubth that those places that breed tigers for business are going to check and accept these details from the study. Other thing is that there is still a good and viable population of Indochina tigers in Thailand, so there is no point in trying to use Bengal tigers to populated Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia, while the efforts should be focused in increase and care the tigers from Thailand and, with time, used them to repopulate the other Indochina countries. As we can see, the idea of two tiger subspecies could be the correct one, but sadly is the most problematic based in political and economic purposes. 

*This image is copyright of its original author

* What means to have 5/6 subspecies?
It means to continue with the effrorts to save the tigers like they are in this moment, each country manage they own populations and keep the "purity" of they specimens. Captive tigers in managed zoos still have they value and the mix tigers from private owners can't be used for breeding which is good! So, the "5/6 subspecies" scenario could not be realistic in a natural point of view, but is the most realistic in the modern days, based in the current distribution of tigers and will keep the traffic of generic tigers at minimum.

*This image is copyright of its original author

Using all this information, my opinion is that 2 tiger subspecies is the real one, but for the management of the modern tiger populations and to avoid traffic and bussines of "paper" tigers, I think that the best is the usage of the 5/6 subspecies scenario.

Hope this helps. Reply