Puma concolor coryiFlorida panther

Ge­o­graphic Range

South­east­ern United States. The Florida pan­ther's range is lim­ited to small pock­ets in south­ern Florida. It orig­i­nally ranged from east­ern Texas through Arkansas, Louisiana, Mis­sis­sippi, Al­abama, Geor­gia, Florida, and parts of Ten­nessee and South Car­olina

Habi­tat

Florida pan­thers are most often found in mixed swamp forests and ham­mock forests. Habi­tats can vary over a home range, but gen­er­ally are heav­ily veg­e­tated. Other com­mon habi­tats are slash pine-saw pal­metto wood­lands and oak-pine wood­lands. Their day­time habi­tat tends to be in dense veg­e­ta­tion and cov­ered wet prairies, while at night they use more open prairies and marshes. Pan­thers are good swim­mers and can cross canals, swamps and marshes eas­ily. They also com­monly uses human paths as travel lanes and rou­tinely cross high­ways.

Phys­i­cal De­scrip­tion

Weight: Males-48 to 67 kg.

Fe­males-30 to 45 kg.

The av­er­age length of a male Florida pan­ther is 2.13 m (7 ft.) from nose to tail. Fe­males mea­sure ap­prox­i­mately 1.83 m (6 ft.) nose to tail. Puma con­color coryi has a short, stiff dark brown pelage. The mid-dor­sal re­gion is par­tic­u­larly rich in color, and has ir­reg­u­lar white fleck­ing on the head, nape, and shoul­ders. On the mid­dle of the back, Florida pan­thers usu­ally have a whorl of hair, or cowlick, which dif­fers from the pat­tern of the rest of the hair. The limbs are long with small feet, and a right angle crook at the end of the tail. The tail crook, whorl of hair, and white fleck­ing are not found in other sub­species of P. con­color coryi.

  • Range mass
    30 to 57 kg
    66.08 to 125.55 lb

Re­pro­duc­tion

Florida pan­thers are sea­sonal breed­ers, with the sea­son start­ing in Oc­to­ber and con­tin­u­ing through March. The ma­jor­ity of con­cep­tions occur from No­vem­ber to March. Males reach sex­ual ma­tu­rity at three years of age, while fe­males be­come sex­u­ally ma­ture be­tween two and three years old. The ges­ta­tion pe­riod is 90-95 days. Lit­ters con­sist of be­tween one to three kit­tens. Kit­tens be­come in­de­pen­dent after one and-a-half years. As a re­sult, fe­males tend to breed every other year.

  • Key Reproductive Features
  • gonochoric/gonochoristic/dioecious (sexes separate)
  • sexual
  • Parental Investment
  • altricial
  • post-independence association with parents
  • extended period of juvenile learning

Be­hav­ior

Florida pan­thers are a soli­tary species. Adults are rarely seen to­gether, ex­cept for dur­ing the breed­ing sea­son. Home ranges can be rather large, and many times the ranges of dif­fer­ent pan­thers over­lap. Male home ranges, rang­ing from 200 km2 to 600 km2, tend to be larger than fe­male home ranges, 100 km2 to 300 km2. Both species mark their ter­ri­tory with defe­ca­tion and uri­na­tion, as well as with scrapes. Scrapes are small piles, about six inches long, of dirt and de­bris scraped up by the pan­ther's hind feet. The scrapes are usu­ally uri­nated on, in­di­cat­ing the pres­ence of the an­i­mal to oth­ers. They are made more often dur­ing breed­ing sea­son, per­haps has a way to ad­ver­tise readi­ness to breed.

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Per­cep­tion

Food Habits

Florida pan­thers are preda­tory car­ni­vores, with white-tailed deer being the most im­por­tant prey species. Other sig­nif­i­cant prey species in­clude rab­bit, rac­coon, wild hog, ar­madillo, and birds. They for­age using stalk and pounce meth­ods com­mon among cats. Prey is ap­proached slowly and at­tacked with short, high speed bursts. Large prey like deer are killed by bit­ing the spinal cord on the top of the neck where the neck and head join. Kills are dragged to a con­cealed place for the pan­ther to feed. The fore­quar­ters of the car­cass are eaten first, and the rest is buried with grass and fed upon later. Florida pan­thers will spend ap­prox­i­mately three to four days at a kill site.

  • Primary Diet
  • carnivore
    • eats terrestrial vertebrates

Con­ser­va­tion Sta­tus

The Florida pan­ther has been listed as an en­dan­gered species under the En­dan­gered Species Act since its pas­sage in 1973. The Florida pan­ther is in grave dan­ger of be­com­ing ex­tinct. They have an es­ti­mated pop­u­la­tion of 20-50 an­i­mals. They are rel­e­gated to small habi­tat pock­ets, and the only areas they can be pre­dictably found are in Ever­glades Na­tional Park and Big Cy­press Na­tional Pre­serve. Most pan­ther pop­u­la­tions were elim­i­nated be­fore 1900 by set­tlers who hunted them be­cause they killed live­stock as well as out of fear. Other his­tor­i­cal fac­tors lead­ing to the pan­ther's de­cline were habi­tat loss due to human en­croach­ment and a sub­se­quent re­duc­tion in prey species. Added threats today in­clude low pop­u­la­tion num­bers re­sult­ing in lit­tle ge­netic vari­abil­ity and dis­ease and par­a­sites. Con­ser­va­tion and re­cov­ery ef­forts are headed by the Florida Pan­ther Record Clear­ing­house, es­tab­lished in 1976 by the Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Com­mis­sion.

Con­trib­u­tors

Craig Howard (au­thor), Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan-Ann Arbor, Tanya Dewey (ed­i­tor), An­i­mal Di­ver­sity Web.

Glossary

Nearctic

living in the Nearctic biogeographic province, the northern part of the New World. This includes Greenland, the Canadian Arctic islands, and all of the North American as far south as the highlands of central Mexico.

World Map

altricial

young are born in a relatively underdeveloped state; they are unable to feed or care for themselves or locomote independently for a period of time after birth/hatching. In birds, naked and helpless after hatching.

bilateral symmetry

having body symmetry such that the animal can be divided in one plane into two mirror-image halves. Animals with bilateral symmetry have dorsal and ventral sides, as well as anterior and posterior ends. Synapomorphy of the Bilateria.

carnivore

an animal that mainly eats meat

chemical

uses smells or other chemicals to communicate

endothermic

animals that use metabolically generated heat to regulate body temperature independently of ambient temperature. Endothermy is a synapomorphy of the Mammalia, although it may have arisen in a (now extinct) synapsid ancestor; the fossil record does not distinguish these possibilities. Convergent in birds.

forest

forest biomes are dominated by trees, otherwise forest biomes can vary widely in amount of precipitation and seasonality.

motile

having the capacity to move from one place to another.

native range

the area in which the animal is naturally found, the region in which it is endemic.

scrub forest

scrub forests develop in areas that experience dry seasons.

sexual

reproduction that includes combining the genetic contribution of two individuals, a male and a female

solitary

lives alone

tactile

uses touch to communicate

Ref­er­ences

Al­varaz, Ken. 1993. Twi­light of the Pan­ther: Bi­ol­ogy, Bu­reau­cracy, and Fail­ure in an En­dan­gered Species Pro­gram. Sara­sota, Florida: Myakka River Pub­lish­ing.

Belden, Robert C., William B. Franken­berger, Roy T. McBride, and Stephen T. Schi­wik­ert. 1988. Pan­ther Habi­tat Use in South­ern Florida. Jour­nal of Wildlife Man­age­ment, 52(4):660-663.

Dal­rym­ple, G. H., and O. L. Bass, Jr. 1996. The diet of the Florida pan­ther in Ever­glades Na­tional Park, Florida. Bul­letin of the Florida Mu­seum of Nat­ural His­tory, 39(5):173-193.

Maehr, David S., E. Dar­rell Land, Jayde C. Roof, and J. Wal­ter Mc­Cown. 1989. Early Ma­ter­nal Be­hav­ior in the Florida Pan­ther (Felis con­color coryi). Amer­i­can Mid­land Nat­u­ral­ist, 122:34-43.

Maehr, David S., Ellis C. Greiner, John E. Lanier, and David Mur­phy. 1995. No­toedric Mange in the Florida Pan­ther. Jour­nal of Wildlife Dis­eases, 31(2):251-254.

Maehr, David S. 1997. The Ecol­ogy of the Bob­cat, Black Bear, and Florida Pan­ther. Bul­letin of the Florida Mu­seum of Nat­ural His­tory, 40(1):1-155.

United States Fish and Wildlife Ser­vice. 1987. Florida Pan­ther (Felis con­color coryi) Re­cov­ery Plan. Pre­pared by the Florida Pan­ther In­ter­a­gency Com­mit­tee for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Ser­vice, At­lanta, Geor­gia. 75 pp.

IUCN - The World Con­ser­va­tion Union, 1996. "Species Sur­vival Com­mis­sion: IUCN Cat Spe­cial­ist Group: Species Ac­counts: Puma con­color" (On-line). Ac­cessed July 11, 2002 at http://​lynx.​uio.​no/​catfolk/​sp-accts.​htm.