Risky business: red foxes killed when scavenging from snow leopard kills

Scavenging of foods is a common but potentially dangerous behavior that exposes animals to risk of injury and even death from other animals. Here we report on two observations of red foxes that were killed when scavenging from snow leopard kills that illustrates the risks associated with scavenging for red foxes and other small and medium-sized predators

Detection and Genetic Characterization of Viruses Present in Free-Ranging Snow Leopards Using Next-Generation Sequencing

Snow leopards inhabit the cold, arid environments of the high mountains of South and Central Asia. These living conditions likely affect the abundance and composition of microbes with the capacity to infect these animals. It is important to investigate the microbes that snow leopards are exposed to detect infectious disease threats and define a baseline for future changes that may impact the health of this endangered felid. In this work, next-generation sequencing is used to investigate the fecal (and in a few cases serum) virome of seven snow leopards from the Tost Mountains of Mongolia. The viral species to which the greatest number of sequences reads showed high similarity was rotavirus. Excluding one animal with overall very few sequence reads, four of six animals (67%) displayed evidence of rotavirus infection. A serum sample of a male and a rectal swab of a female snow leopard produced sequence reads identical or closely similar to felid herpesvirus 1, providing the first evidence that this virus infects snow leopards. In addition, the rectal swab from the same female also displayed sequence reads most similar to feline papillomavirus 2, which is the first evidence for this virus infecting snow leopards. The rectal swabs from all animals also showed evidence for the presence of small circular DNA viruses, predominantly Circular Rep-Encoding Single-Stranded (CRESS) DNA viruses and in one case feline anellovirus. Several of the viruses implicated in the present study could affect the health of snow leopards. In animals which are under environmental stress, for example, young dispersing individuals and lactating females, health issues may be exacerbated by latent virus infections

The timing of breeding and independence for snow leopard females and their cubs

Significant knowledge gaps persist on snow leopard demography and reproductive behavior. From a GPS-collared population in Mongolia, we estimated the timing of mating, parturition and independence. Based on three mother-cub pairs, we describe the separation phase of the cub from its mother as it gains independence. Snow leopards mated from January-March and gave birth from April-June. Cubs remained with their mother until their second winter (20-22 months of age) when cubs started showing movements away from their mother for days at a time. This initiation of independence appeared to coincide with their mother mating with the territorial male. Two female cubs remained in their mothers' territory for several months after initial separation, whereas the male cub quickly dispersed. By comparing the relationship between body size and age of independence across 11 solitary, medium-to-large felid species, it was clear that snow leopards have a delayed timing of separation compared to other species. We suggest this may be related to their mating behavior and the difficulty of the habitat and prey capture for juvenile snow leopards. Our results, while limited, provide empirical estimates for understanding snow leopard ecology and for parameterizing population models

Seasonal variation in daily activity patterns of snow leopards and their prey

The daily and seasonal activity patterns of snow leopards (Panthera uncia) are poorly understood, limiting our ecological understanding and hampering our ability to mitigate threats such as climate change and retaliatory killing in response to livestock predation. We fitted GPS-collars with activity loggers to snow leopards, Siberian ibex (Capra sibirica: their main prey), and domestic goats (Capra hircus: common livestock prey) in Mongolia between 2009 and 2020. Snow leopards were facultatively nocturnal with season-specific crepuscular activity peaks: seasonal activity shifted towards night-sunrise during summer, and day-sunset in winter. Snow leopard activity was in contrast to their prey, which were consistently diurnal. We interpret these results in relation to: (1) darkness as concealment for snow leopards when stalking in an open landscape (nocturnal activity), (2) low-intermediate light preferred for predatory ambush in steep rocky terrain (dawn and dusk activity), and (3) seasonal activity adjustments to facilitate thermoregulation in an extreme environment. These patterns suggest that to minimise human-wildlife conflict, livestock should be corralled at night and dawn in summer, and dusk in winter. It is likely that climate change will intensify seasonal effects on the snow leopard's daily temporal niche for thermoregulation in the future

Prey Preference of Snow Leopard (Panthera uncia) in South Gobi, Mongolia

International audienceAccurate information about the diet of large carnivores that are elusive and inhabit inaccessible terrain, is required to properly design conservation strategies. Predation on livestock and retaliatory killing of predators have become serious issues throughout the range of the snow leopard. Several feeding ecology studies of snow leopards have been conducted using classical approaches. These techniques have inherent limitations in their ability to properly identify both snow leopard feces and prey taxa. To examine the frequency of livestock prey and nearly-threatened argali in the diet of the snow leopard, we employed the recently developed DNA-based diet approach to study a snow leopard population located in the Tost Mountains, South Gobi, Mongolia. After DNA was extracted from the feces, a region of ~100 bp long from mitochondrial 12S rRNA gene was amplified, making use of universal primers for vertebrates and a blocking oligonucleotide specific to snow leopard DNA. The amplicons were then sequenced using a next-generation sequencing platform. We observed a total of five different prey items from 81 fecal samples. Siberian ibex predominated the diet (in 70.4% of the feces), followed by domestic goat (17.3%) and argali sheep (8.6%). The major part of the diet was comprised of large ungulates (in 98.8% of the feces) including wild ungulates (79%) and domestic livestock (19.7%). The findings of the present study will help to understand the feeding ecology of the snow leopard, as well as to address the conservation and management issues pertaining to this wild cat

Mapping the ghost : estimating probabilistic snow leopard distribution across Mongolia

We are grateful to Global Environment Facility, United Nations Development Program and Snow Leopard Trust for supporting the Global Snow Leopard and Ecosystem Protection Program and development of tools and methods for Population Assessment of the World's Snow leopards (PAWS).Aim Snow leopards are distributed across the mountains of 12 countries spread across 1.8 million km2 in Central and South Asia. Previous efforts to map snow leopard distributions have relied on expert opinions and modelling of presence-only data. Expert opinion is subjective and its reliability is difficult to assess, while analyses of presence-only data have tended to ignore the imperfect detectability of this elusive species. The study was conducted to prepare the first ever probabilistic distribution map of snow leopards across Mongolia addressing the challenge of imperfect detection.  Location We conducted sign-based occupancy surveys across 1,017 grid-cells covering 406,800 km2 of Mongolia's potential snow leopard range.  Methods Using a candidate model set of 31 ecologically meaningful models that used six site and seven sampling covariates, we estimate the probability of sites being used by snow leopards across the entire country.  Results Occupancy probability increased with greater terrain ruggedness, with lower values of vegetation indices, with less forest cover, and were highest at intermediate altitudes. Detection probability was higher for segments walked on foot, and for those in more rugged terrain. Our results showed broad agreement with maps developed using expert opinion and presence-only data but also highlighted important differences, for example in northern areas of Mongolia deemed largely unfavourable by previous expert opinion and presence-only analyses.  Main conclusions This study reports the first national-level occupancy survey of snow leopards in Mongolia and highlights methodological opportunities that can be taken to scale and support national-level conservation planning. Our assessments indicated that 0.5) probability of being used by snow leopards. We emphasize the utility of occupancy modelling, which jointly models detection and site use, in achieving these goals.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Variation in plant composition along a gradient of increasing distance from wells in a mountain steppe in Southern Mongolia

Habitat degradation and heavy grazing by livestock are common conservation challenges across the steppes of Mongolia and Central Asia. Livestock grazing patterns are generally not uniform and are typically greater near campsites and watering holes. In this study, we examined how plant composition in a mountain steppe in southern Mongolia varied along a gradient of increasing distance from wells. We found that the cover and average height of Ephedera prezewalskii increased with increasing distance from the wells whereas soil chemistry and the other variables of plant composition that we examined were similar along the gradient of increasing distance from the wells. These results suggest relatively limited impact of livestock grazing on plant composition in our study. However, our study was limited in space and time and further studies are needed to understand the impact of livestock grazing in this mountain steppe in southern Mongolia