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Threatened but understudied: supporting conservation by understanding the genetic structure of the flat-headed cat

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Abstract

The flat-headed cat (Prionailurus planiceps) is a wetland specialist, currently facing habitat loss on a serious scale due to massive destruction of lowland forests and wetlands in Southeast Asia. Despite its ‘endangered’ status in the IUCN Red List, there has virtually been no investigation on the population structure nor on the evolutionary history of the flat-headed cat. To fill this gap, we used full mitochondrial genome sequences, obtained from archival samples, covering the historical distribution of the flat-headed cat. Our data revealed a high genetic differentiation (F st = 0.81, P < 0.001) between mitochondrial lineages from Borneo and those from Thai-Malay Peninsula/Sumatra, a split that was dated to ~575 Kya. Such a significant differentiation clearly distinguishes the Bornean flat-headed cat population from all other populations and suggests that there should be a reassessment of the flat-headed cat’s intraspecific taxonomy. However, morphological and nuclear data are required to corroborate our mtDNA results. Until such data become available, we recommend that for future conservation efforts and captive breeding programmes the two genetically distinct flat-headed cat populations are managed separately as two lineages to maintain the original genetic diversity of this endangered species.

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Acknowledgements

We thank all the institutions and persons listed in Table 1 that supplied the biological specimens for this work.

Availability of data

We have deposited the primary data underlying these analyses as follows: Mitogenome sequences: GenBank accession KY682728-47

Funding

This work was funded by the Leibniz-Association grant SAW-2013-IZW-2.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW), Alfred-Kowalke Str.17, 10315, Berlin, Germany

    Riddhi P. Patel, Dorina Lenz, Jörns Fickel, Daniel W. Förster & Andreas Wilting

  2. Freie Universität Berlin, Kaiserswerther Str. 16-18, 14195, Berlin, Germany

    Riddhi P. Patel

  3. Department of Natural Sciences, National Museums Scotland, Chambers Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1JF, UK

    Andrew C. Kitchener

  4. Institute of Geography, School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh, Drummond Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9XP, UK

    Andrew C. Kitchener

  5. Institute for Biochemistry and Biology, University of Potsdam, Karl-Liebknecht-Str 24-25, 14476, Potsdam, Germany

    Jörns Fickel

Authors
  1. Riddhi P. Patel
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  2. Dorina Lenz
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  3. Andrew C. Kitchener
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  4. Jörns Fickel
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  5. Daniel W. Förster
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  6. Andreas Wilting
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Correspondence to Riddhi P. Patel.

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10592_2017_990_MOESM1_ESM.pdf

Supplementary Fig. I Phylogeny constructed with Maximum-Likelihood (ML) approach using 1669 bp (16S rRNA (368 bp), ATP 8 (161 bp)) and cytochrome b (1140 bp)) of mitochondrial genome. Only nodes with values &#x003E; 80% (ML) are shown. Samples MT1 and MT2 are from previous study (Luo et. al. 2014) (PDF 128 KB)

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Patel, R.P., Lenz, D., Kitchener, A.C. et al. Threatened but understudied: supporting conservation by understanding the genetic structure of the flat-headed cat. Conserv Genet 18, 1423–1433 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10592-017-0990-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10592-017-0990-2

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