Research overview: bobcat dietary flexibility and prey switching

A survey of the broad, adaptable diet of the bobcat, which lets this mid-sized felid thrive across diverse North American habitats. Bobcats specialize on lagomorphs such as cottontails and jackrabbits where available but readily switch to rodents, birds, and small ungulates like deer fawns, adjusting prey use with season, region and prey abundance. This overview synthesizes diet studies across the bobcat's range, how prey switching follows fluctuations in rabbit and rodent populations, and how dietary flexibility compares with the narrower diets of specialist felids like the Iberian lynx. It considers the bobcat's role in regulating small-mammal prey and its overlap and competition with coyotes and other carnivores, illustrating how generalist predation supports a wide ecological niche.