🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Across the western United States, puma populations range from large and connected to small and isolated, and genetics reveals how habitat configuration creates source and sink dynamics. This overview…

The grain and extent at which a habitat model is built strongly influence its conclusions, a key consideration for wide-ranging cats. This overview surveys how the choice of spatial resolution, from c…

Identifying where to concentrate conservation under climate change requires mapping vulnerability, combining exposure to change with the value and irreplaceability of habitat. This overview surveys ho…

Where continuous corridors are impossible, smaller patches of habitat can act as stepping stones that let animals move across otherwise inhospitable terrain. This overview surveys the role of stepping…

Detecting whether bobcats are advancing into lynx range requires repeated, detection-corrected surveys across the contact zone. This overview surveys the field and analytical methods, snow-track surve…

Systematic conservation planning uses optimization to select areas that efficiently meet biodiversity targets, and it is being adapted to account for climate change. This overview surveys how planning…

Functional connectivity, whether animals actually move between habitat patches, is best assessed with movement data from collared cats. This overview surveys how GPS telemetry, step-selection function…

The Jaguar Corridor Initiative aims to keep jaguar populations connected from Mexico to Argentina by conserving linkages between core areas. This overview surveys how the initiative's corridor framewo…

Whether a cat's distribution is limited directly by temperature or indirectly through prey, vegetation, and competitors shapes how it will respond to warming. This overview surveys what is known about…

As temperatures rise, cats may adjust their activity patterns to avoid heat, shifting toward more nocturnal or crepuscular behavior, with consequences for hunting and human overlap. This overview surv…

Faced with range-wide decline, tiger conservation has emphasized protecting a network of source sites, well-managed core areas capable of producing surplus animals to repopulate surrounding land. This…

Rugged terrain creates a mosaic of microclimates, with cool, shaded, or moist pockets that can buffer species against regional warming, a key idea for montane cats. This overview surveys how topograph…

Beyond distribution models, conservationists use structured climate vulnerability assessments that combine a species' exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity into an overall risk rating. This ove…

The Sundarbans straddle India and Bangladesh, so safeguarding its tigers against climate change requires coordinated cross-border action. This overview surveys how the two nations monitor and manage t…

Snow leopard range spans twelve countries, so climate-resilient conservation requires cooperation across contested international borders. This overview reviews how initiatives like the Global Snow Leo…

Assessing whether a habitat model is any good requires careful evaluation, especially when projecting into the future where ground truth is unavailable. This overview surveys the metrics used, AUC, tr…

Satellite indices of vegetation productivity such as NDVI track the green forage that drives herbivore abundance, offering a remote way to anticipate prey conditions for predators. This overview surve…

Climate warming is enabling herders to graze livestock at higher elevations and later into the season, expanding the overlap between domestic stock and snow leopard core habitat. This overview examine…

Cats vary in how much they depend on free-standing water versus obtaining moisture from prey, a trait that shapes drought resilience in arid landscapes. This overview surveys what is known about water…

Managers of reserves holding lions, tigers, and other cats sometimes provision artificial water to buffer wildlife against drought, a practice with contested ecological consequences. This overview sur…

Beyond burning habitat, wildfire produces smoke whose sublethal effects on wildlife, including mammals, are an emerging research area. This overview surveys what is known and hypothesized about smoke…

Wildlife overpasses and underpasses are increasingly used to reconnect carnivore populations split by highways, with high-profile projects designed for pumas. This overview surveys the evidence that c…

Rising carbon dioxide, altered rainfall, and changed fire and grazing regimes are driving woody plant encroachment into many African savannas, reshaping habitat for cats and their prey. This overview…

This pioneering study quantified how projected sea-level rise threatens the tigers of the Sundarbans, the world's largest mangrove forest and home to a unique population of Bengal tigers. Using elevat…

Loucks, C., Barber-Meyer, S., Hossain, M.A.A., Barlow, A., Chowdhury, R.M. · Climatic Change · 2010

This study mapped the global human footprint, a composite index of human pressure on land, and tracked its change over time, revealing where pressures intensified and where they eased. The human footp…

Venter, O., Sanderson, E.W., Magrach, A., Allan, J.R., Beher, J., Jones, K.R., et al. · Nature Communications · 2016

This widely cited review synthesized the theory and practice of species distribution models (SDMs), the statistical tools that relate species occurrence to environmental predictors to map current and…

Elith, J., Leathwick, J.R. · Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics · 2009

This influential review synthesized the global status of the largest carnivores, including big cats such as lions, tigers, leopards, and jaguars, documenting widespread range contraction and populatio…

Ripple, W.J., Estes, J.A., Beschta, R.L., Wilmers, C.C., Ritchie, E.G., Hebblewhite, M., et al. · Science · 2014

This range-wide assessment compiled data to show that the cheetah occupies a small fraction of its historical range and is more threatened than previously recognized, with most populations existing ou…

Durant, S.M., Mitchell, N., Groom, R., Pettorelli, N., Ipavec, A., Jacobson, A.P., et al. · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2017

This study used a multi-scale occupancy framework to examine how Sumatran tigers use natural forest versus plantation and degraded landscapes, finding that tigers strongly depend on forest cover and a…

Sunarto, S., Kelly, M.J., Parakkasi, K., Klenzendorf, S., Septayuda, E., Kurniawan, H. · PLoS ONE · 2012

This landmark assessment modeled how upslope movement of the alpine treeline under warming could shrink the snow leopard's alpine and subalpine habitat across the Himalaya. Using climate envelopes and…

Forrest, J.L., Wikramanayake, E., Shrestha, R., Areendran, G., Gyeltshen, K., Maheshwari, A., Mazumdar, S., Naidoo, R., Thapa, G.J., Thapa, K. · Biological Conservation · 2012