Research overview: modeling epidemic thresholds and dynamics in social felids

Mathematical models help predict how diseases spread through felid populations and whether outbreaks will fizzle or explode. This overview surveys epidemiological modeling applied to wild cats, from estimating the contact structure of social lions to assessing extinction risk from rare but lethal distemper events in low-density tigers. It examines key concepts such as the basic reproduction number, critical community size, the role of multi-host reservoirs, and how social organization shapes transmission. The synthesis connects model insights to management questions like vaccination thresholds and reservoir control. It aims to help readers understand how theory complements field data, allowing researchers to explore scenarios that cannot be tested directly and to anticipate the conditions under which a pathogen poses a genuine threat to a felid population.