🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

As apex predators, big cats can exert top-down control that ripples through ecosystems via trophic cascades. This overview synthesizes evidence that lions, tigers, leopards, pumas, and jaguars influen…

Conserving big cats in a human-dominated world depends on applying their ecology to the challenge of coexistence. This overview synthesizes how understanding prey requirements, ranging, dispersal, and…

Leopards coexist with larger, dominant carnivores by avoiding them in space, time, and behavior. This overview synthesizes research showing how leopards select denser cover, shift activity to avoid pe…

Big cats not only compete for prey but kill one another, and intraguild predation shapes the structure of carnivore communities. This overview synthesizes research on how dominant cats such as lions a…

As the largest African cat, the lion exerts strong intraguild pressure on cheetahs and leopards. This overview synthesizes research on how lions kill cheetah cubs and steal kills, forcing cheetahs int…

Where several large cats share a landscape, they coexist by partitioning resources along axes of prey size, habitat, and activity. This overview synthesizes research across continents showing how tige…

Beyond killing prey, big cats shape ecosystems through the fear they inspire, altering where and how prey forage. This overview synthesizes research on the landscape of fear, in which the risk of pred…

Leopards famously haul their kills into trees, a behavior with clear ecological logic. This overview synthesizes research showing that caching prey in trees protects it from kleptoparasitism by lions,…

This comprehensive reference compiled the biology, ecology, and conservation status of all the world's wild cat species, from the great roaring cats to the smallest felids. Drawing together field stud…

Sunquist, M. E., Sunquist, F. C. · University of Chicago Press · 2002