Research overview: defining conservation units in felids

Conservation managers must decide which populations to treat as separate units for protection, breeding, and translocation, and genetics provides the primary evidence. This overview surveys the concepts of evolutionarily significant units and management units as applied to cats, the markers and analyses used to delineate them, and the tension between preserving distinct lineages and rescuing tiny populations through gene flow. It discusses contested cases such as tiger and lion subspecies, the role of adaptive versus neutral variation in defining units, and how the framework guides decisions about whether to keep populations separate or connect them, balancing distinctiveness against genetic health.