Research overview: demographic and behavioral consequences of tuberculosis in lions

Beyond individual illness, bovine tuberculosis may reshape lion populations and social behavior over time. This overview synthesizes research and modeling on how chronic TB reduces survival and reproduction, potentially altering pride stability, territory turnover and population trajectories in heavily affected areas. It examines the challenge of separating TB effects from other pressures such as prey availability, snaring and competing diseases, and the long latent course that makes impacts gradual and hard to measure. The synthesis weighs concerns that TB could compound with FIV and other stressors to undermine lion viability. It aims to give readers a sense of how a slow, chronic disease can exert population-level and even behavioral effects, and why long-term monitoring is needed to detect them in wild felids.