Research overview: the rationale behind the 2017 felid taxonomy revision

This overview explains the reasoning the Cat Classification Task Force used to justify a major revision rather than incremental edits. It describes the decision rules adopted: recognize taxa only when supported by multiple, independent, concordant lines of evidence, and otherwise lump conservatively to avoid inflating diversity. It walks through how this principle reshaped tigers, lions, leopards, and several small cats, and why the group prioritized stability and conservation utility. The piece also addresses criticism that the revision was too conservative, retaining ambiguous taxa as subspecies pending genomic data. By laying out the criteria explicitly, the task force made future revisions auditable, so enthusiasts can see exactly what evidence would be needed to change a given name.