🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

This study combined species distribution modeling with projected climate change to locate the parts of High Asia most likely to remain suitable for snow leopards as temperatures rise. By overlaying cu…

Li, J., McCarthy, T.M., Wang, H., Weckworth, B.V., Schaller, G.B., Mishra, C., Lu, Z., Beissinger, S.R. · Biological Conservation · 2016

This paper argued that projections of species distributions under climate change carry large uncertainty arising from the choice of model, climate scenario, and other factors, and that ensemble foreca…

Araujo, M.B., New, M. · Trends in Ecology & Evolution · 2007

This paper introduced the MaxEnt method, a maximum-entropy approach for modeling species distributions from presence-only data, which became one of the most widely used tools in the field. Because muc…

Phillips, S.J., Anderson, R.P., Schapire, R.E. · Ecological Modelling · 2006

This influential review examined the rapidly growing field of species distribution modeling, comparing statistical methods, discussing the ecological theory connecting environment to occurrence, and o…

Guisan, A., Thuiller, W. · Ecology Letters · 2005

The high plateaus and meadows that underpin snow leopard prey systems are sensitive to warming, permafrost thaw, and altered precipitation. This overview surveys how degradation of alpine grassland on…

Climate change can shift the balance between grassland, savanna, shrubland, and forest, transforming the habitat templates that different cats require. This overview surveys how projected biome shifts…

Snow cover shapes how snow leopards stalk prey, move across terrain, and den, so shifts in the timing, depth, and persistence of snow under warming can alter their ecology. This overview surveys how r…

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…

Snow leopard persistence is tightly coupled to wild ungulate prey such as blue sheep (bharal), Himalayan ibex, and argali, whose forage and distribution shift with warming. This overview surveys how a…

Climate refugia, places relatively buffered from climate change where species can persist, are an increasingly central organizing idea in conservation planning. This overview surveys the typology of r…

Climate velocity measures how fast and in what direction conditions are shifting across a landscape, indicating the speed at which species must move to keep pace. This overview surveys how climate vel…

The most realistic forecasts of cat futures combine climate change with land-use change, since for many forest cats habitat conversion is the faster, larger threat. This overview surveys how integrate…

A core prediction of climate change is that mountain species will shift upslope, and detecting such shifts in elusive cats is a methodological challenge. This overview surveys the evidence and approac…

Detecting climate-driven range shifts in snow leopards requires repeated, standardized occupancy surveys across elevation gradients. This overview surveys how camera-trap arrays and occupancy modeling…

Existing protected-area networks were largely designed around present-day distributions and may not cover where species will need to be as the climate changes. This overview surveys gap analyses that…

The mountains of High Asia store water as snow and ice, and accelerating glacial retreat reshapes downstream hydrology that supports the meadows and prey of snow leopards. This overview surveys how ch…

An overview of the ecological mechanism by which warming pushes the alpine treeline upslope and squeezes the open, rocky terrain snow leopards use. As shrubs and forest advance into former alpine mead…

Detecting how cats respond to climate and habitat change requires monitoring at scales that camera-trap networks increasingly provide. This overview surveys how coordinated camera-trap arrays generate…

Most felid distribution models are correlative, fitting statistical relationships between occurrence and environment, but mechanistic models built from physiology and energetics offer a complementary…

Projecting a species into the future requires transferring a model into climate conditions that may not exist anywhere today, raising the risk of unreliable extrapolation. This overview surveys the pr…

Climate-adaptation strategies, refugia protection, corridors, assisted colonization, need monitoring to know whether they work over the long timescales of climate change. This overview surveys the ind…

Whether species can evolve or behaviorally adjust their climate niche fast enough to keep pace with change is central to predicting their fate. This overview surveys the concept of niche conservatism,…

Climate change is shifting the timing of biological events, and while phenology is best studied in plants and birds, it bears on cats through their prey and reproductive timing. This overview surveys…

As suitable habitat contracts to higher, cooler refugia, the corridors linking snow leopard populations become critical for gene flow and recolonization. This overview surveys the methods researchers…

Protecting continuous elevation gradients lets species shift upslope as climate warms while staying within protected habitat, a recurring strategy for montane regions. This overview surveys the ration…

Wildlife occurrence data for cats are often opportunistically collected, biased toward roads, reserves, and accessible terrain, which can distort distribution models if uncorrected. This overview surv…

This survey reviews how snow leopard species distribution models are run across contrasting greenhouse-gas emissions pathways to bracket the range of plausible future habitat. It explains how downscal…

Snow leopards occur at naturally low density across a patchy, mountainous range, so climate-driven habitat fragmentation poses a real risk to gene flow. This overview surveys what noninvasive genetic…

The arid mountains of Mongolia and the Gobi support an important snow leopard population at the dry edge of the species' climate envelope. This overview surveys how warming and changing precipitation…

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…