NSU Research Focuses on Elusive, Vulnerable Big Cat: The Leopard
Credit: Nikolay-Zinoviev
The majestic leopard – the only great cat species (Genus Panthera) to roam about both Africa and Asia today – is classified as highly vulnerable by the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). An international team involving scientists from Nova Southeastern University (NSU), Nottingham Trent University, the University of Cambridge, University of Leicester in U.K. and the University of Potsdam in Germany hope to improve that status.
Because of its elusive nature, and its adaptation to multiple landscapes (rain forest, savannah, deserts and mountain sides) an accurate estimation of their global census has not been possible.
Using the latest technologies of population ecology and molecular evolution, researchers sampled the genome DNA sequence of 23 individual leopards from eight geographically separated subspecies locales. Ancient DNA sequences for 18 archival specimens along with five living leopards were combined to refine our understanding of the leopard’s movements, population reductions, divergence and isolation, and over the past half million years.
The new study was published in Current Biology in May.
“This study changes everything about genetic contributions to conservation management of the world’s leopards, particularly the highly threatened Amur leopard,” said Stephen J. O’Brien, Ph.D., a professor and research scientist in NSU’s Halmos College of Arts and Sciences, who is a collaborating author and also led the genetic analyses the Florida panther restoration two decades ago.
O’Brien, is also the Chief Scientific Officer at the Theodosius Dobzhansky Center for Genome Bioinformatics, St. Petersburg State University, Russia, and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.