近日,，法國格勒諾布爾約瑟夫大學(xué)的Wasim Shehzad和同事在國際著名雜志PLoS One上發(fā)表了他們最新的研究成果“Prey Preference of Snow Leopard (Panthera uncia) in South Gobi, Mongolia”,，在文章中,，研究者用DNA分析的方法得出了雪豹的食譜,。
雪豹并沒有邀請科學(xué)家參與它們孤獨的狩獵行動,。因此搞清這種瀕危的亞洲“大貓”到底吃些什么的通常做法是詢問當(dāng)?shù)氐木用?、發(fā)現(xiàn)動物的殺戮場所，或分析它們給人類留下的“小禮物”——也就是雪豹的糞便,，并檢查穿過其消化道的少量毛發(fā),、骨骼和牙齒。
然而大部分毛發(fā)看起來都很類似,，并且科學(xué)家們很難搞清他們所找到的一坨糞便到底來自于一頭雪豹,，還是當(dāng)?shù)仄渌氖橙鈩游铩?/p>
因此一個研究小組在蒙古南部的山區(qū)間采用了一種新的方法——對88個糞便樣本進行了脫氧核糖核酸（DNA）分析。
研究人員表示,，每個糞便樣本都僅含有一種獵物留下的遺跡，并且這里只有5種不同的獵物——最常見的西伯利亞野山羊,、瀕臨滅絕的盤羊,、家山羊、家綿羊,，還有僅在一個樣本中出現(xiàn)的石雞,。
研究表明，野生動物構(gòu)成了雪豹79%的獵物,，這要多于其他研究得到的結(jié)果——對于當(dāng)?shù)氐男竽翗I(yè)主來說,，這也是一個好消息。
雪豹是一種美麗而瀕危的貓科動物,。因其活動路線較為固定,，易捕獲，加之豹骨與豹皮價格昂貴，導(dǎo)致人類不斷捕殺雪豹,，使雪豹的數(shù)量急劇下降,。人類的活動給這種大型貓科動物帶來了巨大的生存壓力，估計種群數(shù)量僅有幾千只,。目前雪豹數(shù)量最多的國家是哈薩克斯坦,。（生物谷Bioon.com）
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0032104
PMC:
PMID:
Prey Preference of Snow Leopard (Panthera uncia) in South Gobi, Mongolia
Wasim Shehzad1, Thomas Michael McCarthy2, Francois Pompanon1, Lkhagvajav Purevjav3, Eric Coissac1, Tiayyba Riaz1, Pierre Taberlet1*
Accurate 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.
