Is water an important resource for the snow leopard (Panthera uncia) in periods when terrain is covered with snow?
Is water an important resource for the snow leopard (Panthera uncia) in periods when terrain is covered with snow?
复制标题
当地形被雪覆盖时，水是雪豹（Panthera uncia）的重要资源吗？
DOI：
10.1080/15230430.2020.1736902
复制
发表时间：
2020
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Takuya Soma & Kodzue Kinoshita
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Dale M. Kikuchi;Kubanychbek Zhumabai Uulu;Koustubh Sharma;Takuya Soma & Kodzue Kinoshita
一些生活在寒冷环境中的哺乳动物会吃雪来满足它们对水的需求。然而，在吃雪和喝水之间存在潜在的权衡，因为身体在使摄入的雪变暖方面投入了相当大的能量。据称，雪豹（Panthera uncia）吃雪是为了满足其对水的需求，这就是为什么一些研究人员在开发资源选择功能时没有将水视为限制资源的原因。在这项研究中，我们于2018年9月至2019年5月在吉尔吉斯共和国Shamshy野生动物保护区的未冻河岸放置了相机陷阱，目的是记录动物在一年中的不同时间获得液态水的情况。人们首次记录到一只雪豹在整个地面被雪覆盖的冬天喝水。这只动物喝了将近58秒的水，这表明雪豹更喜欢喝液态水，而不是无处不在的雪。这一观察结果对雪豹的研究和保护策略具有重要意义，这些策略倾向于假设水的可用性与雪豹无关。
Some mammalian species that inhabit cold environments are known to eat snow to fulfill their water requirements. However, there is a potential trade-off between eating snow and drinking water because of the considerable energy that the body invests in warming the ingested snow. It is claimed that the snow leopard (Panthera uncia) eats snow to fulfill its requirement of water, which is why several researchers do not consider water as a limiting resource when developing resource selection functions. In this study, we placed camera traps along the unfrozen river banks in the Shamshy Wildlife Sanctuary in Kyrgyz Republic from September 2018 to May 2019 with the objective of recording access to liquid water by animals during different times of the year. A snow leopard was recorded for the first time drinking water during winter when the entire ground surface was covered with snow. The animal drank water for nearly 58 seconds, indicating that the snow leopard preferred to drink liquid water as opposed to snow that was ubiquitously present. The observation has significant implications for snow leopard research and conservation strategies that tend to assume the nonrelevance of the availability of water to snow leopards.