The
generic name Leopardus was proposed by
John Edward Gray in 1842, when he described two spotted cat skins from Central America and two from
India in the collection of the
Natural History Museum, London. Several genera were proposed in the 19th and early 20th centuries for small spotted cats in the Americas, including: •
Dendrailurus,
Lynchailurus,
Noctifelis,
Oncifelis and
Oncoïdes by
Nikolai Severtzov in 1858; •
Margay,
Pajeros,
Pardalina and
Pardalis by Gray in 1867; •
Oncilla by
Joel Asaph Allen in 1919; •
Oreailurus by
Ángel Cabrera in 1940; •
Colocolo by
Reginald Innes Pocock in 1941. Analysis of skull
morphology of these
taxa revealed close similarities in their
base of skulls and
nasal bones, their
masticatory muscles, and dentition.
Phylogenetic analysis of tissue samples of these taxa and their ability to
hybridise support the notion that they are members of the same genus. A 2021 analysis of 142 pampas cat museum specimen collected across South America showed significant morphological differences between them. Therefore, it was proposed to split the historically contentious pampas cat
species complex into five species:
Leopardus colocolo,
Leopardus braccatus,
Leopardus garleppi,
Leopardus munoai, and
Leopardus pajeros. Later that same year, it was noted that the oldest available name for pampas cats of the Uruguayan savannah region was
Leopardus fasciatus, not
L. munoai. Another study in 2023 described another new species,
Leopardus narinensis, based on a single dried skin collected in 1989 on the
Galeras Volcano in the Nariño Department of Colombia. They found it to be very different from all other
Leopardus species both morphologically and genetically. A different study in 2024 did a detailed analysis of both the morphology and genetics of specimens assigned to
Leopardus tigrinus,
Leopardus guttulus, and
Leopardus emiliae. It suggested
L. t. pardinoides should be elevated to species status as
Leopardus pardinoides due to significant differences in morphology, genetics, and ecology. The study also assigned the subspecies
L. t. oncilla to be a subspecies of
L. pardinoides as
L. p. oncilla. Additionally, genetic analysis suggested that
Leopardus emiliae was not genetically distinct from
L. tigrinus, and thus may be invalid. The study recommended the common names savannah tiger-cat for
L. tigrinus, Atlantic Forest tiger-cat for
L. guttulus, and clouded tiger-cat for
L. pardinoides. An expanded list of
Leopardus species would be: •
Leopardus braccatus, the
Pantanal cat or Brazilian pampas cat •
Leopardus colocola, the colocolo or Central Chilean pampas cat •
Leopardus emiliae, the eastern tigrina or Snethlage's tigrina •
Leopardus fasciatus, Muñoa's pampas cat or Uruguayan pampas cat •
Leopardus garleppi, the northern pampas cat or Garlepp's pampas cat •
Leopardus geoffroyi, Geoffroy's cat •
Leopardus guigna, the kodkod •
Leopardus guttulus, the southern tigrina or Atlantic Forest tiger-cat •
Leopardus jacobita, the Andean mountain cat •
Leopardus narinensis, the Nariño cat, Galeras cat, or red tigrina The last
common ancestor of
Leopardus,
Puma and
Lynx is estimated to have lived , based on analysis of nuclear DNA of cat species. Within the genus, three distinct
clades were identified: one comprising the ocelot and the margay, a second the Andean mountain cat and Pampas cat, and the third the kodkod, oncilla and Geoffroy's cat. The following
cladogram shows estimated
divergence times in million years ago (mya). }} }} == References ==