Leopardus pardalis
Creators: name: Don E. Wilson
name: Russell A. Mittermeier
Publisher: name: Lynx Edicions
Year: 2009
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Chordata
Mammalia
Carnivora
Felidae
Leopardus
Leopardus pardalis

description: 14.
Ocelot
Leopardus pardalis
French: Ocelot / German: Ozelot / Spanish: Ocelote
Taxonomy. Felis pardalis Linnaeus, 1758,
State of Veracruz, Mexico.
Recent phylogenetic analyses of mtDNA show present species partitioned into four major geographic groups. The Central American and southern South America populations form monophyletic groups, but populations in northern South America are divided into two distinct, ancestral clusters. One geographic cluster is in NNE South America (French Guyana and N Brazil) and the other cluster is in NNW South America (Panama, Trinidad, Venezuela, and N Brazil). Ten subspecies are recognized.
Subspecies and Distribution.
L. p. pardalis Linnaeus, 1758 — S Mexico through Central America.
L. p. aequatorialis Mearns, 1902 — N Andes.
L. p. albescens Pucheran, 1855 — S USA (SW Texas) to NE Mexico.
L. p. melanurus Ball, 1844 — Venezuela E to the Guianas highlands, also Trinidad I.
L. p. mitis Cuvier, 1820 — S Brazil through Paraguay to N Argentina.
L. p. nelsoni Goldman, 1925 — W Mexico (from Sinaloa to Oaxaca).
L. p. pseudopardalis Boitard, 1842 — N Colombia and W Venezuela.
L. p. pusaeus Thomas, 1914 — coastal Ecuador to Peru.
L. p. sonoriensis Goldman, 1925 — NW Mexico, and formerly USA (Arizona).
L. p. steinbachi Pocock, 1941 — Bolivian highlands.
Descriptive notes. Head-body 72:6-100 cm, tail 25-5— 41 cm. Adult males are slightly larger (7-15. 5 kg) than adult females (6.6-11. 3 kg). Medium-sized cat with a relatively short tail. Background coat color highly variable, from cream to tawny-yellow, reddishgray, or gray. Fur is short and sleek. Coat is marked with solid or open-centered dark spots that sometimes form elongated transverse lines across the body. The black spots coalesce into streaks on the neck. Underparts are whiteish with occasional dark spots. The tail is marked with dark bars on the upper surface. Backs of the rounded ears are black with a central white spot. The front paws are much larger than the hind paws.
Habitat. Occurs in a broad range of subtropical and tropical habitats, including dense thorny chaparral in S Texas, subtropical moist forest in Belize, lowland riverine rain forest in Peru, gallery forest and shrub woodlands in Venezuela, semi-deciduous forest and seasonally flooded marshes in the Brazilian Pantanal, and subtropical forest in southern Brazil. This diversity of habitats might suggest that they are habitat generalists, but close monitoring of radio-collared animals indicates they are highly dependent on dense ground or forest cover. Indeed, they occupy a much narrower range of microhabitats than would have been predicted by their wide geographic distribution. Ocelots often rest during the daytime in brush piles, clumps of vines in trees, among the roots of large trees, under tree falls, and even in concrete culverts. Recorded from sea level to about 1200 m
Food and Feeding. Primarily on terrestrial, nocturnal rodents weighing less than 1 kg. The small rodents include rice rats, cotton rats, marsh rats, Black Rats, cane mice, pocket mice, and spiny rats. They also prey on opossums, squirrels, cavies, rabbits, and small primates (Callictrichidae, Cebidae). Larger prey are taken relatively infrequently and include tamanduas, armadillos, sloths, pacas, agoutis and acouchis, porcupines, young Collared Peccaries, and young White-tailed Deer and brocket deer. In some areas young iguanas and land crabs (Trichodactylidae) are important seasonal components of the diet. There are also records of ocelots taking guans, doves, tinamous, frogs, fish, and insects. The occurrence of aquatic and semi-aquatic prey in the diet is not unexpected, as Ocelots are reportedly strong swimmers and in some areas they live in seasonally inundated environments. Ocelots usually hunt at night, scanning for prey while walking slowly along trails. They are also sit-and-wait predators. On occasion they spend 30-60 minutes sitting motionless at a site, then move rapidly to another hunting site where they sit and wait again. Though they hunt mostly in dense cover they sometimes forage in open areas at night.
Activity patterns. Commonly active twelve tol14 hours a day. They typically rest between dawn and late afternoon, then begin moving an hour or so before sunset. Diurnal activity is not uncommon. In Venezuela, activity levels of radio-collared Ocelots increased sharply around sunset and remained fairly high throughout the night. Activity levels decreased substantially after sunrise and the cats usually rested from mid-morning until mid-afternoon. Ocelots were significantly more active during the daytime in the wet season, particularly on cloudy and overcast days. Daytime activity is probably related to the diurnal activity of some prey species such as birds, iguanas, and small primates. Activity levels may also change in response to other circumstances. In Peru, one female increased her hunting efforts to 17 hours a day to try to feed her single young. For reasons unknown, a male in the same area walked for 31 out of 34 consecutive hours.
Movements, Home range and Social organization. Ocelots spend the majority of their active periods walking slowly (0-3 to 1-4 km/h) about their home ranges. Distances traveled by males during these nightly activities tend to be greater than those of females. Detailed radio-tracking studies in Venezuela showed that in the dry season, adult males traveled about 7-6 km per night compared to 3-8 km per night for adult females. Their movements were sometimes nearly continuous and at other times their travels were punctuated by short periods (30-60 minutes) of no detectable movement, when the cats were probably sitting and waiting for prey to pass by. Distances traveled by both sexes in the wet season were reduced by 18 to 24%. Information on home range sizes of adult females indicates remarkably small variation across the species’ geographic distribution, varying only from 0-8 to 15-6 km*. For adult males, home range size varies from 3-5 to 17-7 km?®. Ocelots are solitary, and the larger ranges of adult males typically overlap the smaller home ranges of two to three adult females. Density estimates of Ocelots vary from 13-7/ 100 km? in southern Brazil to 40/ 100 km? in the Venezuelan llanos and 80/ 100 km ® in the lowland rain forest of the Peruvian Amazon. High Ocelot density reduces the density of smaller sympatric felids.
Breeding. Ocelots have a long gestation period (79-82 days). Litter size is small, with one young per litter being the mode. Young weigh about 250 g at birth and grow and mature slowly; they begin following their mother at about three months of age and remain dependent on her for food for several more months. Young do not attain adult weight until they are 24-30 months of age. In the wild the interbirth interval is every two years. Young disperse from their natal ranges when they are 2-3 years old. Dispersal distances for 13 radio-tagged young varied from 2-5 to 30 km. The lifetime reproductive potential for an eight-year old female is about 4-6 young. In captivity, Ocelots are known to live for 20 years, but longevity in the wild is likely to be half that.
Status and Conservation. CITES Appendix I. Classified as Least Concern on The IUCN Red List. In the 1960s, as populations of large spotted cats began to dwindle, the fur trade shifted to the smaller spotted cats, particularly the Ocelot. From the early 1960s to the mid-1970s an estimated 200,000 ocelot were killed annually for the skin trade. A variety of wildlife protection laws were enacted during the same time interval and many countries outlawed the commercial export of wildlife. Other consumer countries began to prohibit the import of spotted cat skins and the number of ocelot skins in trade dropped significantly. The species was upgraded to Appendix I in 1989 and international trade ceased, but illegal hunting continues in some areas. Compared with the similar-sized Bobcat, present species has a low reproductive potential, and thus would appear to be vulnerable to even low levels of exploitation.
Bibliography. Aliag-Rossel et al. (2006), Bianchi & Mendes (2007), Broad (1987), Caldwell (1984), Crawshaw & Quigley (1989), Emmons (1987, 1988), Harveson et al. (2004), Konecny (1989), Laack et al. (2005), Ludlow & Sunquist (1987), Maffei & Noss (2008) Maffei et al. (2005), McMahan (1986), Meza et al. (2002), Mondolfi (1986), Moreno et al. (2006), Nowell & Jackson (1996), Oliveira et al. (In press), Sunquist (1992), Sunquist & Sunquist (2002), Sunquist et al. (1989), Tewes & Schmidly (1987), Trolle & Kery (2003).
description: Published as part of Don E. Wilson & Russell A. Mittermeier, 2009, Felidae, pp. 54-168 in Handbook of the Mammals of the World – Volume 1 Carnivores, Barcelona :Lynx Edicions on page 145, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.6376899