Journal of Threatened Taxa |
www.threatenedtaxa.org | 17 February 2020 | 12(2): 15272–15275
ISSN 0974-7907 (Online) | ISSN 0974-7893
(Print)
doi: https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.5484.12.2.15272-15275
#5484 | Received 21 October 2019 | Final
received 18 January 2020 | Finally accepted 29 January 2020
Record of a 10-year old European
Wildcat Felis silvestris
silvestris Schreber,
1777 (Mammalia: Carnivora: Felidae) from Mt. Etna, Sicily, Italy
Stefano Anile 1,
Sebastien Devillard 2, Clayton Kent
Nielsen 3 & Mario Lo Valvo 4
1, 3 Cooperative Wildlife Research
Laboratory, University of Southern Illinois, Carbondale 62901, USA.
2 Université
Claude Bernard Lyon 1, CNRS, Laboratoire de Biométrie et Biologie Evolutive,
F-69100, Villeurbanne, France.
4 Laboratorio
di Zoologia applicata, Dipartimento STEBICEF, University of Palermo, 90123,
Palermo, Italy.
1 stefanoanile@yahoo.it
(corresponding author), 2 sebastien.devillard@univ-lyon1.fr, 3
kezo92@siu.edu, 4 mario.lovalvo@unipa.it
Editor: Angie Appel,
Wild Cat Network, Bad Marienberg, Germany. Date of publication: 17 February
2020 (online & print)
Citation: Anile, S., S. Devillard, C.K. Nielsen & M.L. Valvo
(2020). Record of a 10-year old European
Wildcat Felis silvestris
silvestris Schreber,
1777 (Mammalia: Carnivora: Felidae) from Mt. Etna, Sicily, Italy. Journal of Threatened Taxa 12(2): 15272–15275. https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.5484.12.2.15272-15275
Copyright: © Anile et al. 2020. Creative Commons Attribution
4.0 International License. JoTT allows unrestricted use, reproduction, and
distribution of this article in any medium by providing adequate credit to the
author(s) and the source of publication.
Funding: This research was funded
by Etna Park.
Competing interests: The authors
declare no competing interests.
Acknowledgements: SA thanks Dr. Michele Leonardi and Dr. Rosa Spampinato
(Etna Park officers) for making this study feasible. SA also thanks Dr. Luigi Piccinini
and Maurizio Pennisi from the “Ripartizione
Faunistico Venatoria di
Catania” for providing the cameras used in this study. We also thank three anonymous reviewers for
their useful comments which have improved a first version of this
manuscript. Lastly, we all thank Marisa Mazzaglia, former president of
Etna Park, for supporting this
wildcat research without any hesitation.
Information on longevity is key to the
understanding of population biology of a species (Healy et al. 2014)
and is being collected by researchers across taxa (Cutler 1979; Wilkinson & South 2002;
De Magalhaes & Costa 2009; Gonzalez-Lagos
et al. 2010; Tidiere et al. 2016). Longevity data of wildlife can be collected
through long-term monitoring programs (Smith et al. 2017),
but is often difficult to apply to rare and elusive species, such as small
carnivores. Alternatively, longevity data can also be collected both from dead
animals by using cementum annuli to estimate the age of death (Kamler & Macdonald 2006)
and from species held in captivity, although it is well-known that captive
animals generally live longer than those in the wild (Ricklefs & Cadena 2007; Tidiere et al. 2016).
Within the Felidae there is a consistent bias
in the scientific community to study larger species rather than smaller ones (Brodie 2009;
Macdonald et al. 2010; Anile & Devillard 2015, 2018),
and hence scientific data on life history traits for smaller species are
lacking. Given the aforementioned
constraints, knowledge of longevity of small carnivores in the wild is rare. To our knowledge, the only longevity study of
European Wildcats is that of Hartmann
(2005) in Switzerland, where captive animals attained
12–16 years of age. Here we report our
recent finding of a European Wildcat recaptured by camera traps after nine
years on Mt. Etna in Sicily, Italy.
Our study area was located on Mt. Etna in
Sicily, Italy (Fig. 1A), the highest active volcano in Europe and a World
Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2013 (UNESCO World Heritage Center 2019). Extensive descriptions of our study area are
reported elsewhere (Anile et al. 2014, 2019).
We have been using camera traps to survey the
Wildcat population on Mt. Etna since 2006 (Anile et al. 2009, 2010, 2012a,b, 2014,
2019). Extensive
details about the methods and materials used in the surveys related to the
present study are reported in Anile
et al. (2012b) (Fig. 1B) and in Anile et al. (2019). With respect to the methods reported in Anile
et al. (2019), the 2018 survey was conducted from 30 May 2018 to 14 November
2018, with fewer cameras (n = 76 across seven line transects) and with a
reduced trap-days effort (n = 1,985) due to the reduced availability of camera
traps (Fig. 1B).
In the first photograph dated 26 May 2009
(Image 1A) this Wildcat was clearly identifiable by the absence of the typical black-tipped
tail of the European Wildcat (Ragni & Possenti 1996); its tail
showed only a clear white ring (Image 1B).
In addition, the shape of the dorsal stripe aided to confirm its
recapture. During the same survey, two
additional photographs of this individual were obtained at two other camera
stations. Collectively, three
photographs at three neighbouring camera stations
were recorded. During the camera
trapping survey conducted in 2018, this individual Wildcat was recaptured on 10
June 2018 at one camera station (Image 1C), relatively near to where it was
captured during the 2009 survey. The
mean distance from the other camera stations where it was previously recorded
was 960m. The time between the first and
last photograph was 3,302 days (9.04 years).
Hence, the likely minimum age of this individual at the time of
recapture must have been at least 10 years.
Camera trapping has greatly increased our
scientific knowledge on many cat species worldwide. Indeed, many central topics for the proper management
of Felidae have been investigated, such as population density estimation (Anile et al. 2014),
habitat selection (Lesmeister et al. 2015; Anile et al. 2019),
population dynamics (Karanth et al. 2006; Sharma et al. 2014; Duangchantrasiri et al. 2015;
Majumder et al. 2017), and adult sex ratio (Anile & Devillard 2018). Furthermore,
recent years have seen an increased collaboration among researchers for sharing
camera trapping data, and hence the investigation of ecological patterns at
larger scales, i.e., across study areas (Steenweg et al. 2017; Davis et al. 2018; Khwaja et al. 2019).
The Wildcat population dwelling on Mt. Etna
has been extensively (n = 41 individuals from 2010–2018) screened for
detecting hybridization with Domestic Cats Felis
catus, but no evidence of hybridization has been
detected in this population (Mattucci et al. 2013;
Anile et al. 2014, 2019). Hence, we
consider more likely that a mutilation occurred at the end of the tail, which
was also shorter than the normal size, ~30cm, that caused the loss of the black
tip, rather than considering this anomaly in the typical Wildcat marking system
pattern due to hybridization.
The Wildcat we recaptured after nine years
was surely not a kitten at the time of the first capture, hence we think that
10 years is the minimum reasonable age estimation for this individual. This age estimate still lies at the lower
range when compared to ages of captive Wildcats ranging from 12–16 years
studied by Hartmann
(2005).
Long-term camera trapping studies have been
conducted on Tigers Panthera tigris and Ocelots Leopardus
pardalis, however, the maximum ages attained were
not reported (Karanth et al. 2006; Duangchantrasiri et al. 2015; Majumder et al. 2017;
Satter et al. 2019). On the contrary, Harmsen et al.
(2017) reported a maximum age of 14 and 13 years
for male and female Jaguars Panthera onca, respectively.
When comparing the maximum age we recorded with the few other
longevity records of cat species from the wild (Hunter 2015), we
note that our estimate is considerably high, but still within the range of
those reported for the species, especially when considering the small body mass
(3.7–4.9 kg; Johnson
et al. 2017) of the European Wildcat.
The longevity of an individual European
Wildcat might be influenced to some extent by local circumstances, e.g.,
absence of natural predators and widespread refuges as in our study area. In general, longevity is also shaped by
ecological traits such as body mass (Healy et al. 2014), with
larger species living longer than smaller ones.
Long-term monitoring using camera traps can help understand patterns,
which cannot be detected when using a small window in time, but this would
require a more sustainable support from funding agencies as the costs involved
with this kind of studies are certainly higher than surveys running over a
shorter period.
For
figure & image - - click here
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