38 genomes, five tiger cats
The peer-reviewed Current Biology paper that went online on 17 September reads complete genomes from 38 Leopardus individuals, 26 of them tiger cats. The genomes split a complex once treated as one species into five and describe Leopardus tilcayo as new in Bolivia's Yungas forests.[1]
The lineage diverged from the line that holds L. tigrinus and L. pardinoides nearly 1.4 million years ago. Combined head and body length is about 42 to 50 centimetres; mass is 1.5 to 2 kilograms. Eight genomes were generated from museum specimens.[1]
A local name becomes a scientific door
Pause on this: people in the Yungas already called the cat tilcayo. The paper turns that word into a Latin binomial. Eduardo Eizirik says it is the first time a living cat has been scientifically named in a century. The forest did not gain a new animal; the inventory finally kept a lineage that was already there on its own line.[1]
The new Peruvian Yungas subspecies L. tigrinus antisuyo repeats the same operation: cats that look alike become separate units across mountain and river barriers. All five species are cryptic; they are hard to tell apart in the field. That is where a name does work. Until identity is clear, a camera-trap count cannot even say which population is disappearing.[1]
The next line on the conservation list
L. tigrinus is listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. Eizirik says the new species and subspecies will have to be evaluated and protected as distinct units as the forests shrink under expanding agriculture. The paper offers that as a basis for conservation planning; a new IUCN status is absent from these sources. The century-scale naming moment becomes a collective choice only if those units are actually counted in separate files.[1]