Panthera onca
(Linnaeus, 1758) · speciesAt a glance
Sources11 archives
Databases and archives Panthera onca's data was compiled from.
WikipediaWikimedia Foundation22 languages↗
Animal Diversity WebUniv. of Michigan MZspecies account↗
BioWikiNetmultilingual Wikipediamultilingual↗
GBIFGlobal Biodiversity Information Facility6 850 records↗
ENAEuropean Nucleotide Archive · EMBL-EBI28 eDNA detections↗
BOLD SystemsCentre for Biodiversity Genomics48 specimens↗
Open Tree of LifeOpenTreephylogeny backbone↗
GoaTGenomes on a Tree · Sangergenome & karyotype↗
NCBIUS National Library of Medicinegenome & karyotype↗
Paleobiology DatabasePBDB consortiumfossil record↗
WikidataWikimedia Foundationstructured facts↗Every layer below draws on the sources above — open one to explore it, or use ← → to move between tabs.
The jaguar (Panthera onca) is a large cat species and the only living member of the genus Panthera native to the Americas. With a body length of up to and a weight of up to , it is the largest cat species in the Americas and the third largest in the world. Its distinctively marked coat features pale yellow to tan colored fur covered by spots that transition to rosettes on the sides, although a melanistic black coat appears in some individuals. The jaguar's powerful bite allows it to pierce the carapaces of turtles and tortoises, and to employ an unusual killing method: it bites directly through the skull of mammalian prey between the ears to deliver a fatal blow to the brain. The modern jaguar's ancestors probably entered the Americas from Eurasia during the Early Pleistocene via the land bridge that once spanned the Bering Strait. Today, the jaguar's range extends from core Southwestern United States across Mexico and much of Central America, the Amazon rainforest and south to Paraguay and northern Argentina. It inhabits a variety of forested and open terrains, but its preferred habitat is tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forest, wetlands and wooded regions. It is adept at swimming and is largely a solitary, opportunistic, stalk-and-ambush apex predator. As a keystone species, it plays an important role in stabilizing ecosystems and in regulating prey populations. The jaguar is threatened by habitat loss, habitat fragmentation, poaching for trade with its body parts and killings in human–wildlife conflict situations, particularly with ranchers in Central and South America. It has been listed as Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List since 2002. The wild population is thought to have declined since the late 1990s. Priority areas for jaguar conservation comprise 51 Jaguar Conservation Units (JCUs), defined as large areas inhabited by at least 50 breeding jaguars. The JCUs are located in 36 geographic regions ranging from Mexico to Argentina. The jaguar has featured prominently in the mythology of indigenous peoples of the Americas, including those of the Aztec and Maya civilizations.
No narrative description available for this taxon yet.
Size & morphology3
Life cycle & reproduction10
Diet & foraging5
Habitat & environment2
Physiology & chemistry4
Other traits5
A DNA barcode is a short, standardised stretch of genes that works like a fingerprint — enough to tell one species from another. Below is the molecular trace Panthera onca has left across the world's sequence archives.
At a glance
★ the standard DNA barcode for this group — the short region actually read to tell this species apart. The rest are extra genes sequenced along the way.
Besides the big genome in the nucleus, cells carry a small, circular loop of DNA inside the cell's energy factories — the mitochondria. It is inherited almost only from the mother and is a leftover from ancient bacteria that moved into the cell. The mitochondrial markers above (ND*, COX, CYTB…) are read from exactly this loop. Outer ring = one strand, inner ring = the other.
The complete instruction manual Panthera onca carries — its genome. We read it from three angles — how big it is, how the DNA is packed into chromosomes, and how completely it has been sequenced — and explain how to read each value as you go.
Genome sizehow big the whole instruction manual is
Measured in base pairs (bp) — the individual letters of DNA (human ≈ 3.2 Gb, a bacterium a few million). The chart places this genome on a logarithmic scale — each step to the right is ten times bigger — among reference organisms. Across species a bigger genome loosely tracks with larger cells, slower growth and lower-energy lifestyles (powered flight favours small genomes) — yet it does not imply more genes or a more advanced organism (the long-standing C-value paradox).
Chromosomes & ploidyhow the DNA is packaged
2n is the full chromosome count in a normal body cell; n is a gamete (egg or sperm), which carries half. Ploidy is how many complete chromosome sets each cell holds — 2× (diploid) is typical for animals, while higher levels (polyploidy) are common in plants. Click any value below to see the underlying records and sources.
2n 381×GoaT · Animal Chromosome Counts Database
Sequencing statusassembly quality — how far to trust these numbers
Assembly level tells you how finished the sequence is — from fragmented contigs, through scaffolds, up to a full chromosome-level assembly. BUSCO % estimates completeness: the share of genes expected to be present that were actually found. These describe the data quality, not the organism.
How far back this lineage goes — and how we know. Everything here is measured in Ma, short for “mega-annum”: millions of years ago. The chart reads left to right like a calendar of the Earth, from the deep past on the left to today at the right edgetop to bottom like a core drilled through the Earth, from the deep past at the top down to today at the bottom.
At a glance
When this lineage existed
How to read this: the coloured strip along the bottomdown the left is the geological calendar — the standard epochs (Pliocene, Pleistocene…) every museum uses, shown so you can see which chapter of Earth's history this lineage lived in. This lineage is a young one, so the strip is zoomed in to epochs — the finer subdivisions inside a period. The solid bar is the fossil range: the span between the oldest and the youngest fossil that palaeontologists have assigned to Panthera onca. Above itBeside it, the bars count how many dated finds fall in each slice of time; the tallest bar is labelled, and heights use a square-root scale so that thin slices stay visible next to rich ones. Read this as how well each stretch of time is preserved and studied — thick bars mean plenty of the right kind of rock and plenty of collectors, which is related to, but not the same as, how common it actually was. The orange marker is the DNA clock: DNA accumulates mutations at a roughly steady rate, so comparing this species' DNA with its relatives estimates when the lineage split off — independently of any fossil. Where the DNA reaches further back than the oldest fossil, the gap is hatched: the ghost lineage. It means the lineage was already out there, but has left us nothing we have dug up yet.
How it livedPBDB
Record type6 922 records
Origin
Range
Wildobservation + sensor
Human sightings and records, or camera-trap / sensor detections — someone (or a device) saw or captured the species in the wild.
Museum / Voucheredphysical evidence
Backed by a physical specimen — a herbarium sheet, sample or voucher held in a collection. “Vouchered” means supported by material evidence, not just an observation.
Wildobservation + sensor
Human sightings and records, or camera-trap / sensor detections — someone (or a device) saw or captured the species in the wild.
Holding institutions31 of 60 geolocated
Institutions and collections holding physical, vouchered specimens of this species — click a row to fly to it on the map.
| Institution | Specimens |
|---|---|
| Tuxtla Gutiérrez, MX | 29 |
| Zacatecas, MX | 25 |
| München, DE | 21 |
| Geneva, CH | 18 |
| Wuzhou, CN | 16 |
| Buenos Aires, AR | 16 |
| Barcelona, ES | 14 |
| EL PASO, US | 11 |
| Stockholm, SE | 10 |
| Denver, US | 9 |
| Ecopetrol S.A.location not on record | 6 |
| Pontificia Universidade do Rio Grande do Sul, Laboratorio de Biologia Genomica e Molecularlocation not on record | 6 |
| Carbones del Cerrejón Limited (Cerrejón)location not on record | 6 |
| Tapachula, MX | 5 |
| Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones sobre Recursos Bióticoslocation not on record | 5 |
| Washington, US | 5 |
| Berkeley, US | 5 |
| Toronto, CA | 5 |
| 4 | |
| CORPOAMAZONÍA - Corporación para el Desarrollo Sostenible del Sur de la Amazonialocation not on record | 3 |
| Los Angeles, US | 3 |
| Bonn, DE | 3 |
| Seattle, US | 3 |
| East Lansing, US | 3 |
| Universitylocation not on record | 3 |
| Parque Zoologico Sapucaia do Sullocation not on record | 3 |
| INMAlocation not on record | 2 |
| Universidad de Caldas (UCaldas)location not on record | 2 |
| Saint John, CA | 2 |
| APN-AR-MFAlocation not on record | 2 |
| ASNHClocation not on record | 2 |
| CASlocation not on record | 2 |
| Grupo Prodecolocation not on record | 2 |
| Ann Arbor, US | 2 |
| University of the South Pacificlocation not on record | 2 |
| Louisiana State University, Museum of Zoologylocation not on record | 2 |
| Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (PUJ)location not on record | 2 |
| Ciudad de México, MX | 2 |
| Provo, US | 2 |
| Washington State University, Charles R. Conner Museumlocation not on record | 2 |
| New Haven, US | 2 |
| Mexico City, MX | 2 |
| Guasave, MX | 2 |
| San Diego, US | 1 |
| Natural History Museum of Utahlocation not on record | 1 |
| Mexico City, MX | 1 |
| Iowa City, US | 1 |
| Chicago, US | 1 |
| Fort Hays State University, Sternberg Museumlocation not on record | 1 |
| Geopark Colombia S.A.S. (Geopark)location not on record | 1 |
| Instituto Tecnológico Metropolitano (ITM)location not on record | 1 |
| TERRASOSlocation not on record | 1 |
| Tacoma, US | 1 |
| University of Wisconsin, Zoological Museumlocation not on record | 1 |
| Universidad del Valle (UniValle)location not on record | 1 |
| GeoPark Colombia S.A.S. (GeoPark)location not on record | 1 |
| Universidad de la Amazonia (UniAmazonia)location not on record | 1 |
| Muzeum Górnośląskie w Bytomiulocation not on record | 1 |
| Parques Nacionales Naturales de Colombia (PNN)location not on record | 1 |
| Universidad Nacional de Colombia (UNAL)location not on record | 1 |
Where the DNA of Panthera onca was picked up in samples of water, soil or air — nobody saw the organism, only its DNA left behind. A trace is a clue that the species was near, not a confirmed sighting.
Signal
Where its DNA was found
How strong is each trace?
Modelled climatemodelled
How to read this: each dot is one detection of this species' DNA in an environmental sample. The confidence meter weighs how many independent studies and places back up the signal — one detection in one study is a hint; many across several studies is solid. Records dated before 2008 (when eDNA methods began) are treated as likely mislabeled and left off the map.