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The Pantherinae is a subfamily of the Felidae; it was named and first described by Reginald Innes Pocock in 1917 as only including the Panthera species, but later also came to include the Neofelis (genus Neofelis). The Pantherinae genetically diverged from a common ancestor between and .
The Panthera species have a single, rounded, vocal fold with a thick mucosal lining, a large vocalis muscle, and a large cricothyroid muscle with long and narrow membranes. A vocal fold that is longer than enables all but the snow leopard among them to roar, as it has shorter vocal folds of that provide a lower resistance to airflow; this distinction was one reason it was proposed to be retained in the genus Uncia.
There is evidence of distinct markers for the mitochondrial genome for Felidae.
Results of a DNA-based study indicate that the tiger ( Panthera tigris) branched off first, followed by the jaguar ( P. onca), the lion ( P. leo), then the leopard ( P. pardus) and snow leopard ( P. uncia).
Felis pamiri, first described in 1965 and once referred to as Metailurus in 1978, is now considered a probable relative of Neontology Pantherinae and was moved to the genus Miopanthera. However, this species was later reassigned as a species of a different genus Palaeopanthera, of which P. blytheae is the type species. P. blytheae was initially regarded as possibly the oldest known species of Panthera related to the modern snow leopard that lived during the Early Pliocene, but subsequent studies have since agreed that it is not a member of or a related species of the snow leopard lineage and that it belongs to a different genus.
Taxonomy
Pocock originally defined the Pantherinae as comprising the genera Panthera and Uncia. Today, Uncia has been subsumed into Panthera, and the genus Neofelis is also included.
Living genera
The following table shows the extant taxa within the Pantherinae, grouped according to the traditional phenotypical classification.
See also
External links
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