Range-wide snow leopard phylogeography supports three subspecies

The snow leopard, Panthera uncia, is an elusive high-altitude specialist that inhabits vast, inaccessible habitat across Asia. We conducted the first range-wide genetic assessment of snow leopards based on noninvasive scat surveys. Thirty-three microsatellites were genotyped and a total of 683-bp of mitochondrial DNA sequenced in 70 individuals. Snow leopards exhibited low genetic diversity at microsatellites (AN = 5.8, HO = 0.433, HE = 0.568), virtually no mtDNA variation, and underwent a bottleneck in the Holocene (~8,000 years ago) coinciding with increased temperatures, precipitation, and upward treeline shift in the Tibetan Plateau. Multiple analyses supported three primary genetic clusters: (1) Northern (the Altai region), (2) Central (core Himalaya and Tibetan Plateau), and (3) Western (Tian Shan, Pamir, trans-Himalaya regions). Accordingly, we recognize three subspecies, P. u. irbis (Northern group), P. u. uncia (Western group), and P. u. uncioides (Central group) based upon gen...