So more like they identified that part of the known population was a different species just now. It'll take more effort tagging and identifying other tiger cats to see if they also belong to this particular one?
This effort is actually already ongoing. This splashy headline that seems to have crushed it on publicity front is actually just a small piece of the research currently being done on oncillas (aka tiger cats). The word on the grapevine for the past year or so is that the oncillas are going to get divided up into between five and twelve new species.
Presumably DNA differences - would have been nice to see something about that.
There's mention of wildcats interbreeding with house cats, so presumably ability to cross-breed isn't part of the "new species" calculation?
Considering people have interbred jaguars and leopards, and then interbred the female cubs with lions to get a lijagulep, I'm not sure cross-breeding is the gold standard of speciation that gets sold as such in school.
The greatest threat to some of these cat species (the Scottish Wildcat being a prime example) is loss of genetic differentiation through interbreeding with domestic cats.
> But DNA studies show the cat is actually in a class of its own, highlighting how much remains unknown about some of the world's most elusive mammals.