🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

This study modeled a small puma population in the Santa Monica Mountains near Los Angeles, integrating demography, genetics, and landscape connectivity to estimate extinction risk for cats hemmed in b…

Benson, J.F., Mahoney, P.J., Sikich, J.A., Serieys, L.E.K., Pollinger, J.P., Ernest, H.B., Riley, S.P.D. · Proceedings of the Royal Society B · 2016

Building on earlier work, this study examined how urbanization-driven isolation can drive small puma populations in the Santa Monica and Santa Ana Mountains into an extinction vortex, where inbreeding…

Benson, J.F., Mahoney, P.J., Vickers, T.W., Sikich, J.A., Beier, P., Riley, S.P.D., Ernest, H.B., Boyce, W.M. · Ecological Applications · 2019

This study combined GPS tracking and genetics to show how major roads isolate a mountain lion population in the Santa Monica Mountains, with freeways acting as near-total barriers to movement. The aut…

Riley, S.P.D., Serieys, L.E.K., Pollinger, J.P., Sikich, J.A., Dalbeck, L., Wayne, R.K., Ernest, H.B. · Current Biology · 2014

This study examined how a guild of mammalian carnivores responds to habitat fragmentation in southern California, finding that species differ markedly in their sensitivity to isolation and patch size,…

Crooks, K.R. · Conservation Biology · 2002

Circuit theory, which models animal movement as electrical current flowing across a resistance surface, has become a standard tool for mapping connectivity for wide-ranging cats. This overview surveys…

As suitable conditions shift, species need corridors that connect where they live now to where they will need to live, a concept sometimes called climate connectivity. This overview surveys methods fo…

Drought reverberates through ecosystems by reducing vegetation, prey body condition, and reproduction, with cascading effects on the predators that depend on them. This overview surveys how droughts o…

In western North America, puma populations track deer and other ungulate prey whose abundance and condition fluctuate with drought. This overview surveys how dry years reduce forage, lower prey recrui…

Drought intensifies competition between people and predators for scarce water, forage, and livestock, often heightening human-wildlife conflict. This overview surveys how dry periods push cats toward…

Beyond gradual trends, extreme events, severe droughts, heatwaves, floods, and harsh winters, can cause abrupt declines in cat populations or their prey. This overview surveys documented cases where e…

The wildland-urban interface, where development meets wildland vegetation, is expanding and is the zone where climate-driven fire most directly intersects with cat populations like urban-edge pumas an…

Studying how fire affects cats requires methods to map burns, track animal responses, and disentangle fire from other drivers. This overview surveys the toolkit, satellite burn-severity mapping, GPS t…

Climate change can alter fire regimes, frequency, intensity, seasonality, and extent, pushing ecosystems toward new states that differ from historical conditions. This overview surveys how shifting fi…

Small, isolated cat populations risk inbreeding depression, and genetic rescue, introducing individuals from other populations, has been used to counter it. This overview surveys the concept and its f…

Landscape genetics links genetic patterns to the features of the terrain between populations, a toolkit central to studying fragmentation in cats. This overview surveys the methods, from microsatellit…

Climate change is driving larger, more intense wildfires in many regions, and the extreme fire seasons in Australia, California, and elsewhere have reshaped how ecologists study fire and wildlife. Thi…

Effective population size, the genetically relevant number of breeders, is a key indicator of a fragmented population's resilience. This overview surveys how researchers estimate it for cats from noni…

Population viability analysis estimates extinction risk by simulating a population's demography forward in time, and it is increasingly run under climate scenarios for threatened cats. This overview s…

After fire, vegetation regrows through successional stages that determine when and how prey and predators return. This overview surveys how post-fire recovery shapes habitat quality for cats, the flus…

Managers use prescribed fire to shape vegetation, reduce fuel loads, and create habitat conditions that benefit wildlife, including the prey of cats. This overview surveys how planned burning maintain…

Pumas were extirpated from much of eastern North America but persist and expand in the west, prompting study of where suitable habitat exists and how the species might recolonize. This overview survey…

Pumas in fire-prone California navigate landscapes repeatedly shaped by wildfire, and tracking studies examine how they respond to burns. This overview surveys research on how pumas move during and af…

Roads affect cats through direct mortality and through the barrier effect that fragments populations, a central theme in carnivore conservation. This overview surveys research quantifying how highways…

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…

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…

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…

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…