''Leopardus narinensis'', also called the red tigrina, Nariño cat, and Galeras cat by the scientists who discovered it, is a putative species of small wild

cat The cat (''Felis catus''), also referred to as the domestic cat or house cat, is a small domesticated carnivorous mammal. It is the only domesticated species of the family Felidae. Advances in archaeology and genetics have shown that the ...

in the genus ''

Leopardus ''Leopardus'' is a genus comprising eight species of Felinae, small cats native to the Americas. This genus is considered the oldest branch of a genetic lineage of small cats in the Americas whose common ancestor crossed the Bering land bridge fr ...

''. It was described in 2023, based on a single skin collected in 1989.

Etymology

The specific epithet ''narinensis'' refers to the

Nariño Department Nariño () is a department of Colombia named after independence leader Antonio Nariño. Its capital is Pasto. It is in the west of the country, bordering Ecuador and the Pacific Ocean. Nariño has a diverse geography and varied climate acc ...

in southern

Colombia Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuel ...

, where the skin was collected. The proposed common names "Nariño cat" and "Galeras cat" also refer to where it was found (the

Galeras Galeras (Urcunina among the 16th-century indigenous people) is an Andean stratovolcano in the Colombian department of Nariño, near the departmental capital Pasto. Its summit rises above sea level. It has erupted frequently since the Spanish ...

volcano in the Nariño Department), while "red tigrina" refers to its markedly reddish coloring.

Taxonomy and phylogeny

The skin was first collected in 1989 and donated to a Colombian national institute, which later transferred its biological collections to the

Alexander von Humboldt Biological Resources Research Institute The Alexander von Humboldt Biological Resources Research Institute (), sometimes referred to as IAVH, is an independent non-regulatory research institute of the Executive Branch of the Government of Colombia charged with conducting scientific re ...

, where it remained classified as an

ocelot The ocelot (''Leopardus pardalis'') is a medium-sized spotted Felidae, wild cat that reaches at the shoulders and weighs between on average. It is native to the southwestern United States, Mexico, Central America, Central and South America, ...

skin until 2001, when Manuel Ruiz-García noticed it while searching for jaguar and puma specimens. He recognized it as being a different species and, when other authorities on South American cats could not identify it, spent the next two decades researching the skin. The final paper was published in June of 2023. The red tigrina is classified as a member of the genus ''

'', the small spotted cats of South America. A scientific paper published only two months later, in August 2023, considered the holotype of ''L. narinensis'' to be a specimen of ''L. tigrinus'' based on morphological comparison.

Phylogeny

Genetic analyses indicate that the Nariño cat diverged from other ''Leopardus'' species about 1.3–1.0 million years ago. Both its nuclear and mitochondrial DNA are noted to be different from every known species of cat. In those genetic tests, it was consistently recovered as a sister taxon to the

kodkod The kodkod (''Leopardus guigna''), also called güiña, is the smallest felid species native to the Americas. It lives primarily in central and southern Chile, as well as marginally in adjoining areas of Argentina. Since 2002, it has been listed ...

Geoffroy's cat Geoffroy's cat (''Leopardus geoffroyi'') is a small wild cat native to the southern and central regions of South America. It is around the size of a domestic cat. It is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List due to it being widespread and a ...

clade. Cladogram of ''L. narinensis'' position in the genus:

Characteristics

The Galeras cat is, like other tigrinas, a small spotted cat, but the base color of its fur is more reddish than in other tigrinas. The rosettes are black but with even more intensely red coloring on the inside. The top of the head and the dorsal crest are darker. The body is shorter and more robust, and the head is rounder and wider, the face flatter. The coat is denser and woollier.

Distribution and habitat

The holotype and only specimen was collected from the

páramo Páramo () may refer to a variety of alpine tundra ecosystems located in the Andes Mountain Range, South America. Some ecologists describe the páramo broadly as "all high, tropical, montane vegetation above the continuous timberline". A narrower ...

of the Galeras volcano in southern Colombia, above sea level. The region has a high level of

endemism Endemism is the state of a species being found only in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also foun ...

due to isolation during the climatic changes at the end of the

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( ; referred to colloquially as the ''ice age, Ice Age'') is the geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fin ...

. It has not been recorded by the camera traps that have been present in southern Colombia since 2018, and the species may already be nearly (or even totally) extinct.

References

External links

* {{Taxonbar, from=Q120514490 Leopardus Felids of South America Mammals described in 2023 Species known from a single specimen