Rethinking red panda systematics: a case from a low-elevation encounter from eastern Arunachal Pradesh, India

We conducted a field survey in eastern Arunachal Pradesh and, during the questionaries, we encountered a road-killed red panda. We photographed the individual and collected a small pinche of tissue for DNA analysis. Although the red panda carcass was found from the east of the Siang River, the individual’s morphological characteristics resembled those of the Himalayan red panda, contrary to expectations. Interestingly, phylogenetic analysis and network analysis based on the mitochondrial control region sequences classified this individual in the Chinese red panda lineage. This study suggests that morphological traits are not reliable to distinguish red pandas as suggested earlier.