Chapter 7 - The Taxonomy and Phylogeny of Ailurus

Abstract

The red panda belongs to a family, Ailuridae, all by itself, long-separated from other Carnivora. The fossil record fully confirms this early separation. This makes the red panda, as the only living representative of a long separate evolutionary. The turning point in understanding pandas was the anatomical dissection of a giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca). The earliest molecular study of panda relationships, an immunological study, corroborated Davis's anatomical conclusion that the giant panda is a bear, but placed the red panda as sister to the now enlarged Ursidae, with the raccoon as sister to both. The first subsequent attempt to elucidate the affinities of the red panda itself carefully considered the dental and cranial similarities to, and differences from, the giant panda, other bears, and the Procyonidae; Ailurus was allocated to a separate family, Ailuridae. On balance, the author of this study favored a relationship with the Ursidae, placing the Procyonidae in a separate clade with the Mustelidae. Living red pandas are genetically diverse, and as far as present evidence goes belong to two distinct species: Ailurus fulgens from the Himalayas and perhaps Zhangmu, and Ailurus styani from Yunnan, Sichuan, Burma, and perhaps eastern Tibet.