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da Cunha, C.J.; Moreira, D.O.; Seibert, J.B.; Gatti, A.
Research gaps and trends on the feeding ecology of _Leopardus wiedii_ and_ Leopardus guttulus_
2017  Boletim do Museu de Biologia Profesor Mello Leitao (39): 23-37

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.

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