Comparing big cats - differences/changes with time

[GuateGojira]

(02-16-2020, 11:29 PM)Pckts Wrote: The classification of subspecies is a debatable one, which is why modern science seems to be shrinking it.

The differences between mexico and the pantanal are vast, even between the Amazon and the pantanal, there are many factors.
For instance, in the Amazon during the floods, Jaguars have become sloth hunters and spend most of their time in trees while in the pantanal they dont have that option which is why they are the most aquatic big cat.
What little dry land they have gets washed away and changes every season and the prey they hunt are much more aquatic as well. But this has also led to the largest version of them too.
You can use Lions and Tigers too, for instance, Crater Lions are distinct from the Serengeti lions even though they are essentially the same species but the crater being cooler with more rain and better year round grazing for prey seems to contribute to a much more dense mane that covers the shoulders as well as a more robust cat.
Bengals also show extreme variations even within the same subspecies, I really think the only thing that matters in evolution is habitat, climate and prey base.
If we were to designate every cat with slight variations as a sub species than the classifications could be endless.

This is a very good point about the subspecies clasification. The great mayority of the old subspecies of tigers/lions/jaguars/leopards are based in very few specimens, sometimes only "one" soecimen and some cases those were captive specimens! Those clasifications are incorrect and should be avoided completelly.

Genetic and morphological evidence with tigers and lions suggest only two "subspecies" but others defend more. However, what is the evidence that they have? They support the "subspecies" issue with little genetic evidence that can be explained as simple splits caused by human actions in the habitat, or they say that they "look" different with is a very "victorian" point of view and completelly invalid. Even people like Selous said that the lions look very different in a single area that is futile to try to separate them in groups.

@Pckts give an excelent example with the lions in the Crater and those from Serengeti, they look very diferent but they are the same subspecies. Also the Bengal tigers are so different between populations that someone could clasify a lot of subspecies in the subcontinent but all of them are the same (Ranthambore, Kanha, Nagarahole, etc. etc.), in fact only those from Sundarbans shows real adaptative diferences with those of the other areas and are clasified as its own evolutionary conservation unit; other example are Caspian and Amur tigers, with even less differences than those of Sundarbans/India-Nepal and with a separation of only 200 years!

The point is that animals adapt to they habitat but those adaptations are clinal or based in prey availability and type of terrain, but that doesn't means necesarily that they are going to be a different "subspecies". Even worst, the concept of "subspecies" is still not well defined and the one used with tigers, at least is the one of Dr Kitchener which demands that there should be at least a difference in the 75% between populations and that is something that can be done only with the Mainland and the Sunda tigers. Now, about the adaptations, the Amur/Caspian and the Sundarbans tigers have adapted completelly to they own habitat that they are clasified as a different population that should not be merge with the other ones, but there is no significant diference between Indian-Indochina-Malaysia populations, just some diferences in size and weight, but not different enough to separate them as "subspecies" per se.

At the end, speaking of tigers, the populations are now so separated that the humans had actually created "artificial subspecies" with tigers from the Indian subcontinent completelly isolated from other areas, tigers in Indochina surviving only in Thailiand and probably Myanmar, Malayan tigers with a fragmented population only at the end of the itmus of Kra and the Amur tigers completelly isolated in the Russian far east, so none of those populations have the small change to mix in modern days. The key is in the zoos, where these groups are allready separated and should be keep in that form.

As far I know, and also based in the posts of @"Bornean Tiger", the separations of lions is the same thing, lions from the East and South of Africa are diferent from those from West/North Africa and Asia. Only those from the central region of Ethiopia looks like a mix of the two populations, but we don't have data from wild animals, just captive ones from Addis Ababa Zoo.

About jaguars, like @Pckts says, there are huge differences in habitat and prey and that reflect they differecens in size too, but at the end they are just a single subspecies with adaptations to they habitat. It is incredible that in just a few hundred of years these cats had addapted so well and reflect differences in they morphology and is also incredible until what degree the humans had influenced in the natural world. Reply