Knowledge of abundance, or population size, is fundamental in wildlife conservation and management. Cameratrapping, in combination with capture-recapture methods, has been extensively applied to estimate abundance and density of individually identifiable animals due to the advantages of being non-invasive, effective to survey wideranging, elusive, or nocturnal species, operating in inhospitable environment, and taking low labor. We assessed the possibility of using coat patterns from images to identify an individual leopard cat (Prionailurus bengalensis), a Class II endangered species in South Korea. We analyzed leopard cat images taken from Digital Single-Lense Relfex camera (high resolution, 18Mpxl) and camera traps (low resolution, 3.1Mpxl) using HotSpotter, an image matching algorithm. HotSpotter accurately top-ranked an image of the same individual leopard cat with the reference leopard cat image 100% by matching facial and ventral parts. This confirms that facial and ventral fur patterns of the Amur leopard cat are good matching points to be used reliably to identify an individual. We anticipate that the study results will be useful to researchers interested in studying behavior or population parameter estimates of Amur leopard cats based on capture-recapture models.

This study intended to record a species of feather mite, Neopteronyssus bilineatus Mironov, 2003, (Arachnida: Pteronyssidae), from a grey-capped pygmy woodpecker, Yungipicus canicapillus (Blyth, 1845), in the Republic of Korea. Mite samples were collected from the flight feathers of a woodpecker, preserved directly in 95% ethyl alcohol, and then observed by a light microscope after specimen preparation. Morphology of Neopteronyssus bilineatus is distinguished from other pici group species by opisthosoma part with 2 longitudinal bends, tarsal seta rIII 3 times longer than tarsus III in males, and 2 elongated hysteronotal plates extending beyond the level of setae e2 in females. In the present study, a species of feather mite, N. bilineatus, was newly recorded from Y. canicapillus in Korean fauna.