Research gaps and trends on the feeding ecology of Leopardus wiedii and Leopardus guttulus

ABSTRACT: Studies on feeding habits provide essential information to understand the biology of species, predators' behavior and also provide information on prey community dynamic in an area. However, to perform such studies can be difficult, especially when the species are smaller and elusive, such as Leopardus wiedii and Leopardus guttulus , two Neotropical felids. Information on the ecology of these species is still limited, thus our goal was to identify gaps and trends in publications on feeding habits of L . wiedii and L . guttulus , over the past 25 years, through a scientometric analysis. We collected scientific publications on these species, indexed in three databases, which resulted in 181 publications. Only 16 publications refer to the feeding ecology of L . wiedii and L . guttulus , including five that were found out from the database researched. Our results indicate that the number of publications on the subject has not increased in the recent years. Moreover, there is a lack of research in several biomes and countries where the species occur. Despite the low number of publications, there were several peaks which contributed to the understanding of feeding ecology of both species, and hence the ecological relationships with their prey. This study contributes evaluating the scenario of published work on the feeding ecology of two Neotropical felids, showing the existing gaps and encouraging the direction of future systematized research on this topic. RESUMO : (Tendencias sobre ecologia alimentar de Leopardus wiedii e Leopardus guttulus ) Estudos sobre os habitos alimentares fornecem informacoes essenciais para compreender a biologia das especies, o comportamento alimentar dos predadores e, ainda, fornecem informacoes sobre a comunidade de presas em uma determinada area. No entanto, tais estudos tornam-se dificeis, especialmente, quando as especies sao de menor porte e possuem habitos elusivos, como por exemplo, Leopardus wiedii e L. guttulus , duas especies de felideos neotropicais. O objetivo deste estudo foi identificar as lacunas e tendencias nas publicacoes sobre ecologia alimentar de L. wiedii e L. guttulus , nos ultimos 25 anos, atraves de uma analise cienciometrica. Foram compilados estudos sobre essas duas especies, indexados em tres diferentes bases de dados, resultando em 181 publicacoes. Destas, 16 publicacoes tem como tema a ecologia alimentar de L. wiedii e L. guttulus e cinco publicacoes nao estao indexadas. Os resultados indicam que o numero de publicacoes nao apresentou uma tendencia de aumento nos ultimos anos e que existe uma escassez de pesquisas em varios paises e biomas, onde as especies ocorrem. Apesar de existir um baixo numero de publicacoes sobre o tema, alguns picos de publicacoes contribuiram para ampliar o conhecimento de ambas as especies e, consequentemente, das relacoes ecologicas com suas presas. Este trabalho contribui ao avaliar o cenario dos estudos publicados sobre a ecologia alimentar destes dois felideos neotropicais, demonstrando as lacunas existentes e incentivando o direcionamento de futuros estudos sistematizados sobre o tema. We performed a scientometric analysis about the feeding ecology of southern oncilla (Leopardus guttulus) and margay (Leopardus wiedii) over the past 25 years. From the available literature, we identified 35 studies. Most of them were conducted in Brazil, mainly in the Atlantic Forest. Diet information from these species is scarce in other biomes and countries. Using a generalized linear model analysis we observed that publications tend to increase over the years, and that older studies were the most cited. Our results show that is necessary more studies on the feeding ecology of margay, and, especially, of the southern oncilla.