IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group - Digital Cat Library |
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| Sugimoto, T.; Nagata, J.; Aramilev, V.V.; Belozor, A.; Higashi, S.; McCullough, D.R. | |
| Species and sex identification from faecal samples of sympatric carnivores, Amur leopard and Siberian tiger, in the Russian Far East | |
| 2006 Conservation Genetics (7): 799-802 | |
Amur leopard _Panthera pardus orientalis_ is among the most endangered leopards of the world. They are mainly distributed in Primorye Krai, Russian Far East, with a few tiny plots in China and North Korea. Primorye Krai is sympatrically inhabited by another endangered feline species, Siberian tiger _Panthera tigris altaica_. The two precious large feline species are now threatened by numerous human impacts such as poaching and habitat loss (Miquelle and Pikunov 2003). Currently, conservation and restoration efforts are undertaken to protect the extant population, and understanding their genetic structure is urgent (e.g. Eizirik et al. 2001). Utilization of faeces as a DNA resource has many advantages, since there is no risk of injury or death entailed by capturing or handling endangered species and one can gain various important information on a target population (Kohn and Wayne 1997), although DNA extracted from faeces has several drawbacks such as low DNA quality and quantity and DNA fragmentation, which lead to non-amplification, false allele and allelic dropout (Taberlet et al. 1996; Taberlet and Luikart 1999; Smith et al. 2000). As a preparation for the study of genetic structure of these two endangered species, we developed primer sets for species and sex identification from faecal extracts, since distinguishing between leopard and tiger based on the appearance of their faeces is ambiguous and determining the sex ratio is critically important for conservation (Griffiths et al. 1998; Schliebe et al. 1999). |
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