Dark Clouds Ahead? Anecdotal evidence for an illegal live trade in Sunda Neofelis diardi and Indochinese N. nebulosa Clouded Leopards (Mammalia: Carnivora: Felidae)

Abstract

The Sunda Clouded Leopard Neofelis diardi and Indochinese Clouded Leopard N. nebulosa are medium-sized felids native to tropical southern and southeastern Asia. The only two extant members of their genus, both species exhibit morphological adaptations consistent with arboreality (Van Valkenburgh 1987; Hubbard et al. 2009) and share a common ancestry with other extant pantherine felids (Johnson et al. 2006). Collectively, clouded leopards occur from Nepal east to Vietnam and south through the Indo-Malay Archipelago (N. nebulosa) into Sumatra and Borneo (N. diardi) (Hearn et al. 2015; Grassman et al. 2016). Both species were historically treated as a single phenotypically variable species until recently, when closer molecular and morphological scrutiny yielded evidence of two distinct species (Buckley-Beason et al. 2006; Kitchener et al. 2006).