This paper will have creationists hurriedly trying to redefine evolution so that it no longer means what biologists mean by it — change in allele frequencies in a population over time — but instead becomes some childish parody of the idea, carefully constructed to exclude the scientific definition and so safely miss the point. The paper, published last January (2026) in Heredity, shows that a small, isolated population of leopards (Panthera pardus) in South Africa’s Cape Floristic Region is a striking example of incipient allopatric divergence, and possibly early speciation, in progress. The population, estimated at fewer than 1,000 individuals, has developed a distinctive genome and includes small leopards, some with only about half the body mass of leopards elsewhere in Africa.
In what will also disappoint those creationists who are still eagerly awaiting the abandonment of “Darwinism” by mainstream biologists and its replacement by magic-based creationism, the authors — an international group of leopard conservationists and evolutionary biologists — interpret their findings wholly within the framework of evolutionary theory. By comparing whole-genome data from 43 leopards, including 10 from the Western Cape province (WCP), the team found that the WCP leopards diverged from those of northern South Africa about 20,000–24,000 years ago — in other words, many thousands of years before creationists’ mythical “Creation Week”. They found no obvious evidence that genetic drift alone was responsible for this divergence, and concluded instead that it is more likely to reflect the population’s demographic history, long-term isolation and adaptation to the Cape’s distinctive environmental conditions, including low prey availability.
Their conclusion is that the leopards of the Western Cape can be regarded as an evolutionarily significant unit (ESU): a genetically distinctive population representing a unique component of the species’ evolutionary history and therefore one that should be managed and conserved as such.
One of the team, and first author of the paper, Assistant Professor Laura Tensen of the University of Greifswald, has written an article in The Conversation describing the research and its findings. Her article is reproduced here under a Creative Commons licence, reformatted for stylistic consistency:
Leopards adapted to South Africa’s Cape so successfully that they’re genetically unique – study
The elusive Cape leopard.
Animals of the same species don’t always look the same. From birds with different beak shapes to mammals that vary in size or colour, populations living in different places can often look very different.
What’s much harder to pin down is why these differences arise. Are they shaped by local environments? Or driven by natural or sexual selection? Or are they simply the result of the random loss of gene variants as populations become isolated and slowly diverge over time?
Male leopard photographed by a leopard camera trap.
Credit: Cape Leopard Trust
These leopards are much smaller than leopards elsewhere on the continent – in some cases only half the body mass. For decades, researchers and conservationists have debated whether the leopards of this region are truly a separate population in terms of their genes, and if so, what might be driving that difference.
Previous genetic studies offered only limited answers. Most relied on a small number of genetic markers – specific spots in the DNA where mutations tend to happen more. This is useful in finding out large-scale patterns, but misses the finer details needed to understand how populations evolve.
To fill this gap in the research, we turned to whole-genome data. This means that instead of looking for small regions of the DNA where we expect variation, we analysed the full sequence of paired DNA bases that make up the leopard’s genome (2.57 billion base pairs or roughly 19,000 genes in total). Together with local leopard experts and evolutionary biologists, we collected muscle or skin tissue of the leopards and compared them with genomes of leopards from other parts of Africa.
We found that leopards of the Cape are genetically different from other African leopards. This is because they’ve been isolated from other leopards for a long time and have adapted to one region. This has important implications for conservation.
Leopards in the Cape: smaller, isolated, and genetically unique
Leopards are among the most widespread large carnivores in the world, found across Africa and parts of Asia. Eight subspecies are currently recognised, including the African leopard (Panthera pardus pardus).
The African leopard found across most of sub-Saharan Africa shows extraordinary variation in coat colour, body size and skull shape. In general, leopards living in open habitats tend to be larger and paler, while those in forested areas are often smaller and darker.
The leopards of the Cape Floristic Region (a biodiverse area rich in plants found nowhere else in the world) are an exception to the pattern. They’re relatively small in mass, but until now, no one knew the reason for their distinctive appearance.
A male leopard in Cedarberg, Western Cape, South Africa.
Credit: Cape Leopard Trust.
A similar pattern emerged for leopards from Ghana in west Africa. In both cases, there was little evidence of recent genetic mixing with neighbouring populations.
Leopards occur and move all along the length of the Cape Fold Belt mountain chain, which serves as a refuge for the cats. Beyond the northern and eastern edge of this mountain chain, it appears that leopard movement stops – the apparent barriers being very dry semi-desert in the north and high human activity in much of the Eastern Cape.
How climate change and human persecution shaped leopards in the Cape over 20,000 years
Looking back in time helped explain why this population is genetically unique. Our analyses suggest that these leopards began diverging from populations further east around 20,000-24,000 years ago, during the Last Glacial Maximum (the coldest phase of the last ice age).
We estimated this by analysing whole-genome DNA to reconstruct when populations split and how much they exchanged genes in the past. (We effectively read their shared evolutionary history, written in the genome.)
During this time, southern Africa became cooler and drier, with fewer grasslands and less food, making it harder for animals to move and survive and causing populations to become separated. More recently, leopard numbers fell sharply in the 1800s and 1900s, likely due to human hunting, habitat loss, and bounty systems that encouraged farmers to kill leopards. In 1968 the leopard bounty ended and the leopard population began to recover as conservation efforts grew.
Because they’d been isolated from other leopards and hunted, we expected our research to show that the leopards of the Cape were genetically depleted (when small populations inbreed and lose genetic diversity). Low genetic diversity makes it harder for populations to adapt to new threats like climate change, disease and human pressure. However, we found they have only slightly lower genetic diversity than other African populations – a really positive finding.
Clues in the genome point to adaptation
We also wanted to find out why the leopards of the Cape are smaller in size.
We found about 90 genes that were more common in these leopards, linked to body size, muscles, bones and energy use. These differences made sense given that the environment they live in has much smaller, more sparsely distributed prey than other leopard habitats. Leopards in the Cape feed mostly on species like rock hyrax (Procavia capensis), klipspringer (Oreotragus oreotragus) and Cape grysbok (Raphicerus melanotis).
Together, these genomic signals suggest that these leopards are small because they’ve adapted that way, and not only because of isolation or genetic drift.
Why this matters for conservation
Populations that are genetically distinct and locally adapted are often described as evolutionarily significant units. This means they represent a unique branch of a species’ evolutionary history and need specific protection so that they can continue to adapt to future change.
Leopards in the Cape Floristic Region occupy a landscape unlike any other in southern Africa, shaped by low prey availability, unique vegetation, and rapidly expanding human populations. Large fenced reserves are rare, and leopards frequently move through agricultural and urban-edge landscapes, where conflict with people is common.
A female leopard of the Cape.
Credit: Cape Leopard Trust.
By conserving these leopards, we are not only saving an iconic predator, but also preserving an evolutionary legacy shaped over thousands of years by one of the most distinctive landscapes on the African continent.
Laura Tensen, Assistant Professor, University of Greifswald
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
What we have here, then, is not merely another example of evolution in the abstract, but evolution caught in the act at the population level: isolation, founder effects, local environmental pressures, altered gene frequencies, measurable genetic divergence and a population sufficiently distinct to warrant special conservation status. No magic is required, no supernatural intervention is implied, and no sacred text was needed to predict or explain it. The evidence is exactly where evolutionary biology says it should be — in genomes, geography, demography and ecology.
Creationists, of course, will try to evade the point by insisting that this is only “variation within a kind”, while carefully avoiding any scientifically useful definition of “kind”. But that is precisely the problem for them. Evolution does not need a leopard suddenly to give birth to something other than a leopard. It proceeds by small, heritable changes accumulating in populations over time, especially when those populations become isolated. Given enough time, reduced gene flow and continuing selection, such divergence can become the raw material of speciation. The Western Cape leopards are a textbook example of that process beginning to unfold.
Nor is the timescale helpful to creationists. The divergence of these leopards from other South African populations is estimated to have begun some 20,000–24,000 years ago — long before the supposed “Creation Week” imagined by biblical literalists. Once again, the natural world refuses to compress itself into the absurdly narrow chronology of Genesis. The genomes of these animals preserve a history that is older, richer and far more interesting than anything offered by Bronze Age mythology.
So, once again, creationists are left with the same difficulty they always face: the science works perfectly well without them. Evolution explains the observations, makes sense of the genetic data, fits the geography and timescale, and helps conservationists decide how best to protect a vulnerable population. Creationism contributes nothing beyond denial, word games and special pleading. The Cape leopards, meanwhile, go on doing what living populations have always done — evolving.
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