Arabian leopard

[BorneanTiger]

(05-20-2019, 10:52 PM)BorneanTiger Wrote: I came across this: https://www.earthtouchnews.com/conservat...in-danger/

The Arabian Leopards of Oman by Andrew Spalton and Hadi Al Hikmani, illustrated by Vicky White. 

*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 this 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):

"Luo et al. (2014) published a further molecular study which included more samples from Indochina and the Malay Peninsula. The phylogeographical patterns are not clear for all putative subspecies. For example, P. p. kotiya is close to East Asian leopards based on mtDNA, but groups with P. p. fusca based on microsatellites (Uphyrkina et al. 2001). P. p. saxicolor also seems to group differently depending on the analysis used (Uphyrkina et al. 2001, Luo et al. 2014). Luo et al. 2014 show that P. p. fusca is diphyletic based on mtDNA, which was not found in previous studies. Khorozyan et al. (2006) analysed the skull morphometrics of southwest Asian leopards, and concluded that saxicolor and ciscaucasica were consubspecific, but retained tulliana and millardi as distinct. However, sample sizes were very small for some of these putative subspecies. Rozhnov et al. (2011) examined sequences of mtDNA (NADH5) and 11 microsatellites from southwest Asian leopards. They concluded that all were consubspecific from Afghanistan through Iran to the Caucasus, but no western Turkish specimens (tulliana) were analysed. Here japonensis is included in orientalis; there is no clear biogeographical barrier between these two forms which appear to form a cline in northeastern Asia. As the molecular differences between continental Asian leopards are very small compared to differences in Javan leopards (P. p. melas; Wilting et al. 2016), there could be a case for including all Asian subspecies, excluding melas, in a single Asian subspecies. These conflicting results from different studies suggest that more comprehensive sampling is required from throughout the range, taking advantage of museum specimens of known provenance." Reply