Idu-Mishmi tribe owned forests in Arunachal Pradesh sees six colour morphs of Asiatic golden cat

The Asiatic golden cat is no longer only golden. The species has been seen to flaunt five other colours of which one has been found only in India and another has been found for the first time in India, outside of Indonesia.

The tropical forests of Dibang Valley in Arunachal Pradesh where the Idu Mishmi tribes reside is where the first record of a tightly-rosetted form of the Asiatic golden cat and an ocelot and cinnamon morph from India has been found.

The Asiatic golden cat Catopuma temminckii (International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List Near Threatened) is the largest of the group of smaller Asian felines. It is distributed from eastern Nepal through Northeast India, Myanmar, Thailand, and China to Sumatra, Indonesia where it is found from the sea-level to above 4000 meters in diverse habitats, states a study, which was published in the June edition of Ecology, the Ecological Society of America’s journal.

Six different colour morphs of the Asiatic golden cat were photographed – golden, gray, cinnamon, melanistic, ocelot and a uniquely patterned darker form with tightly-spaced rosettes. The most commonly detected morph was the default golden form followed by gray and melanistic while the cinnamon morph was photographed just twice in a single site only. Dibang Valley hosts the most diverse range of colour morphs of the species ever reported from a single locality.

A colour morph is an occurrence of a variation of colour in a species because of mutation and become common in a population through natural selection if they provide ecological advantages. Colour morphs are not classed as different subspecies as they may live in the same area and even interbreed. However, if differences in their behaviour prevented them from interbreeding – this could represent the beginning of the evolutionary process into separate subspecies. A more well-known example of a colour morph is the melanistic (dark coloured) morph (aka black panther) of the common leopard (Panthera pardus).

The lead author of the study is Sahil Nijhawan, who is a British Academy Fellow at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and a Postdoctoral Researcher at University College London (UCL)and the co-authors also include Iho Mitapo and Jibi Pulu of the Idu Mishmi tribe.

The Idu Mishmi community is native to the districts of Lower Dibang Valley and Dibang Valley. They are predominantly animists who believe that non-humans such as animals and spirits have the same capacities of conscious decision-making as humans do. “The Idu Mishmi culture has many rules that ensure that wildlife is not over hunted. For instance, they believe that the golden cat, particularly darker melanistic morphs, is believed to possess great powers. They observe a strict taboo on hunting all felines including the golden cat,” points out Nijhawan.

While the authors say that camera data from one locality alone are insufficient in solving such an evolutionary puzzle, they speculate that polymorphism may allow golden cats to avoid competition and intra-specific predation from larger carnivores by exploiting a wider range of available ecological niches. In Dibang Valley, golden cats share space with a range of carnivores from larger predators such as tigers and Asiatic wild dogs to similar-sized clouded leopards, and smaller predators such as marbled and leopard cats.

“Our observations therefore seem to suggest that the great diversity of coat types in Asiatic golden cat may allow it to exploit more ecological niches, particularly in an environment full of competitors and predators. This adaptability may contribute to the making the Asiatic golden cat the most ecologically and geographically widespread wild cat in Dibang Valley. According to evolutionary theory, if a colour morph is not beneficial for a species survival – over time, it should die out in the population. The fact that we have so many different colour morphs persisting in Dibang Valley shows there must be some ecological advantages to the variety of colours,” emphasises Nijhawan.

Dibang Valley hosts a wide range of habitats from wet tropical and sub-tropical forest in the lower elevations (<1700 m) through montane forest in mid-altitudes to rhododendron forest, alpine scrub and high-altitude pasture (>3500 m).

For a medium-sized predator like the golden cat, camouflage would be a key adaptation to successfully exploit the unique prey assemblage in each of these diverse habitats whether it is tropical pheasants, rodents and reptiles in warmer low-elevation forests or, Himalayan pika and montane galliformes in the higher elevations. “The two patterned morphs were not only more common in higher elevations, which are wetter and mistier, they were also more nocturnal. This complements earlier findings that irregular patterns in wild felines correlate with more nocturnal hunters and those found in darker/closed environments. Given that this global cross-species phenomenon also seems to exist within a species at a local scale suggests a more fundamental relationship linking coat type to specific environments,” explains the study.

In Arunachal Pradesh, including Dibang Valley, land and forests are under the de facto ownership of local people, unlike in the rest of the country. The Forest Department controls a small percentage of land. “My research has shown that most of the species, including the golden cat, occur in much high numbers in community-owned forests than in some protected forests. These animals have been conserved in the community forests because of the cultural traditions of the local Idu community. And it is these poorly-studied community forests that are under threat from various development plans. Not only do we need to involve local people in conservation efforts, because that is the morally correct thing to do, but we need to recognise that in some area local communities are better at conserving wildlife than outside scientists and forest departments. In a country as culturally diverse as our, we cannot one one-size-fits-all approach to natural resource conservation,” highlights Nijhawan, who didn’t specifically set out to study the Asiatic golden cats.

“My aim was to understand human-wildlife interactions in Dibang Valley. But since there were no baselines on wildlife numbers in the region, I put out over 200 camera traps, a large majority which were placed in Idu-owned forests. My camera traps revealed a stunning range of biodiversity in Dibang Valley including over 30 species of mammals. The many variations of the golden cat were amongst them. Initially I didn't know what they were but after some background research, I realised that they were colour morphs of the same species,” says Nijhawan. He will be publishing other aspects of his research in the next few months on how the Idu Mishmi culture has indirectly aided the conservation of some of the most endangered animals in the world including the tiger.