WILKINS ET AL: FLORIDA PANTHER MORPHOLOGY


 INTRODUCTION

 The puma (Puma concolor) has the most extensive distribution of all
American carnivores (Cabrera and Yepes 1960). At one time, the range of species
covered almost the entire North and South American continents from northern
British Columbia to Patagonia, and it was found in virtually every habitat from
high mountains to tropical swamps (Young 1946). Consistent with this broad
distribution, the species exhibits considerable geographic variation, and 30
subspecies have been recognized (Goldman 1946). The Florida panther (P. c.
coryi) once ranged the southeastern states from Louisiana throughout the lower
Mississippi River Valley east through the southeastern states. Historically, its
distribution was continuous and intergraded with other populations to the north
and west (Goldman 1946). It has been isolated for at least the past 100 years in the
wild lands of south Florida (Bangs 1899) as human settlement patterns caused the
decimation of adjacent cougar populations. Current population estimates vary
between 30 and 80 individuals in the Big Cypress and Everglades ecosystems
(Belden 1986a, Maehr 1997).
 This study reviews the morphological characters of the Florida panther (Puma
concolor coryi). It examines color, cranial morphology and pelage features of the
subspecies in the context of the geographic variation expressed by the species
throughout its range. The Florida panther was discovered and named a subspecies
by Charles Cory (1896). Since that time, there have been only a few published
accounts that provide descriptive information (Bangs 1898, 1899, Nelson and
Goldman 1929, Goldman 1946, Layne and McCauley 1977, Lazell 1981, Belden
1986b). Specimens of cougars from the southeast have always been rare. At the
time of Goldman's comprehensive taxonomic review (1946), only 17 P. c. coryi
museum specimens were available, including three from Louisiana and 14 from
Florida. Layne and McCauley (1977) published weights and measurements for an
additional 15 individuals from Louisiana, Arkansas, and Florida; however, only
five had been preserved as museum specimens. The need to describe the panther
in Florida with a suitable suite of morphological characters has become more
important in the last 15 years with (1) the recovery of panthers from areas outside
their known range in Florida, (2) the probability of escaped or released captive
cats of other subspecies into Florida environment, and (3) problems of verification
in law enforcement issues.
 In 1986, cats in the Everglades were captured for the first time with the
initiation of a radio-telemetry study (Smith and Bass 1994). It was noted that the
Everglades cats differed from the panthers in the Big Cypress in size and overall
appearance and in the absence of the two physical traits that had been documented
in the Big Cypress population; namely, the kinked tail and a mid-dorsal cowlick, or
whorl (Belden 1986a, Roelke 1990, Wilkins and Belden, unpubl. data). Genetic
studies revealed that free-ranging panthers in Florida consist of two genetically
distinct stocks that had evolved separately (O'Brien et al. 1990, Roelke et al. 1993).