Research overview: nutritional stress and disease susceptibility in wild felids

Body condition and nutrition strongly influence how wild felids cope with infection, with stress and malnutrition often tipping tolerated pathogens into disease. This overview surveys the link between nutritional stress and disease susceptibility in cats, exemplified by drought-driven prey decline preceding the lethal distemper and babesiosis epidemic in Serengeti lions. It examines how poor condition impairs immune function, how environmental stressors compound infection risk, and the broader principle that disease outcomes depend on host state as much as pathogen exposure. The synthesis connects ecology and physiology to epidemiology. It aims to help readers understand that infection alone does not determine disease, and that the nutritional and physiological condition of wild cats, shaped by prey availability and environmental conditions, is a decisive factor in whether pathogens cause harm.