Record of a 10-year old European Wildcat Felis silvestris silvestris Schreber, 1777 (Mammalia: Carnivora: Felidae) from Mt. Etna, Sicily, Italy

Stefano Anile,Mario Lo Valvo,Clayton Kent Nielsen,Sebastien Devillard

doi:10.11609/jott.5484.12.2.15272-15275

Stefano Anile, Mario Lo Valvo + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.5484.12.2.15272-15275

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Abstract

Longevity data for wild felids are lacking in the literature. Here we report a camera trap recapture of a European Wildcat Felis silvestris at Mt. Etna in Sicily, Italy after nine years. This individual was clearly identifiable as its tail ended with a white ring rather than the typical black ring and had a unique shape of the dorsal stripe. At first capture on 26 May 2009, this cat was assessed as an adult, so that the likely minimum age of this individual at the time of recapture on 10 June 2018 must have been be at least 10 years. This finding represents the oldest known European Wildcat in the wild and provides insight into age structure in wildcat populations.

Highlights

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 can 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, 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 scientific data on life history traits for smaller species are lacking

Summary

Introduction

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). The only longevity study of European Wildcats is that of Hartmann (2005) in Switzerland, where captive animals attained 12–16 years of age.

Results

Conclusion