🧬 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…

Most big cats organize their use of space through a land-tenure system in which residents hold home ranges advertised by scent and maintained partly through avoidance. This overview synthesizes the ge…

As in lions, the takeover of a tigress's range by a new male can lead to the killing of her dependent cubs, after which she returns to breeding condition. This overview synthesizes field evidence for…

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…

This influential synthesis argued that the loss of large apex consumers, including big cats and other top predators, is among humanity's most pervasive impacts on nature. Drawing on examples across ec…

Estes, J. A., Terborgh, J., Brashares, J. S., et al. · Science · 2011

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