Insights into the spatial ecology of severely injured free-living felids: Iberian lynx, bobcat, and snow leopard.

Severe musculoskeletal diseases, such as those associated with congenital or traumatic events, that result in missing limbs may compromise the fitness and survival of free-living felids. Here we report the space use of four amputee individuals from three felid species captured from 2017 to 2022 in Missouri (USA), Toledo and Badajoz (Spain), and Suitai Khairkhan Mountain (Mongolia). We describe home ranges and daily travel distances post-release of free-living felids that had either suffered a traumatic amputation or following a surgical amputation.

Genetic Diversity of the Amur Tiger (Panthera tigris altaica): Are There Differences between the 20th and the Early 21st Centuries?

Polymorphism of nine microsatellite loci in the Sikhote-Alin tiger population was analyzed in the modern and recent historical periods, using blood, excrement, and museum bone samples. Tests for excess heterozygosity to determine whether the population went through a period of low abundance and a low value of the Garza-Williamson coefficient indicated that such events were highly probable to occur in both recent and earlier history. The mean effective population size Ne of a current sample was 34.

Seasonal space use and habitat selection of GPS collared snow leopards (Panthera uncia) in the Mongolian Altai range.

Although the home range and habitat selection of animal species is among the fundamental pieces of biological information collected by research projects during recent decades, published information on the snow leopard (Panthera uncia) home range is limited. The Altai Mountains of central Asia contain some of the largest and most important remaining conservation landscapes for snow leopards globally, but there is a limited understanding of the species' ecology in this region. First, we used the data from 5 snow leopards equipped with GPS collars at four study sites in the Altai Mountains of Mongolia to broadly characterize patterns of home range use between 2013 and 2019.

Assurance of the existence of a trans-boundary population of the snow leopard (Panthera uncia) at Tsagaanshuvuut - Tsagan-Shibetu SPA at the Mongolia-Russia border.

The existence of a trans-boundary population of the snow leopard (Panthera uncia) that inhabits the massifs of Tsagaanshuvuut (Mongolia) - Tsagan-Shibetu (Russia) was determined through non-invasive genetic analysis of scat samples and by studying the structure of territory use by a collared female individual. The genetic analysis included species identification of samples through sequencing of a fragment of the cytochrome b gene and individual identification using a panel of 8 microsatellites. The home range of a female snow leopard marked with a satellite Global Positioning System (GPS) collar was represented by the minimum convex polygon method (MCP) 100, the MCP 95 method and the fixed kernel 95 method.

Genetic structure of the Amur tiger (Panthera tigris altaica) population: Are tigers in Sikhote-Alin and southwest Primorye truly isolated?

We used molecular genetic analyses to noninvasively identify individual Amur tigers and define subpopulations of tigers in the Russian Far East. We identified 63 individuals after genotyping 256 feces, 7 hair and 11 blood samples collected within southern, central and northern Sikhote-Alin, as well as Southwest Primorye. Analysis of nuclear DNA at 9 microsatellite loci demonstrated greater genetic similarity between animals from southern and northern Sikhote-Alin (some 500 km apart) than between animals from Ussuriskii State Nature Reserve and Southwest Primorye (less than 10 km apart at their nearest point), suggesting that a true barrier exists preventing movements of tigers between Southwest Primorye and the southern Sikhote-Alin Mountains.