🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Domestication reshaped cat behavior, reducing fear of humans and increasing tolerance and sociability, and genetics is beginning to reveal the underlying changes. This overview surveys evidence that s…

One of the most striking early demonstrations of the cheetah's genetic depletion was that skin grafts exchanged between unrelated cheetahs were accepted rather than rejected, indicating near-identical…

The cat family is notable for an unusually conserved karyotype, with most species sharing a similar chromosome number and arrangement that has changed little over the family's history. This overview s…

Complete mitochondrial genomes have been sequenced for most cat species, providing a standardized dataset for phylogenetics, phylogeography, and species identification. This overview surveys the assem…

The Amur leopard, surviving in the Russian Far East and adjacent China, is one of the rarest cats, having dropped to a few dozen individuals. This overview surveys genetic studies documenting its very…

The Amur or Siberian tiger of the Russian Far East recovered from perhaps a few dozen animals in the mid-twentieth century to several hundred today, making it a natural experiment in bottleneck and re…

The fishing cat is a wetland specialist of South and Southeast Asia, increasingly threatened by the loss and fragmentation of marshes and mangroves. This overview surveys the limited but growing genet…

At the northern edge of its range, the ocelot persists in southern Texas as a few small, isolated populations cut off from larger Mexican populations by development and roads. This overview surveys ge…

As lion numbers decline and ranges fragment, conservation genomics has become central to managing the species across protected areas and fenced reserves. This overview surveys how genome-wide data are…

Across the cat family, similar coat phenotypes such as melanism, pale or white morphs, and spotted-to-striped pattern shifts have arisen repeatedly in different lineages. This overview surveys the evi…

The cheetah and the extinct American cheetah independently evolved a slender, long-limbed body built for high-speed pursuit, a striking case of convergence given their separate ancestries within the p…

The small spotted cats of the ocelot lineage in South America, including the ocelot, margay, oncilla or tigrina, and pampas cat, present a tangle of cryptic species, hybrid zones, and unresolved bound…

The small spotted cats of South and Central America, including the margay and the oncilla or little spotted cat, harbor cryptic genetic diversity that has reshaped their taxonomy. This overview survey…

Conservation managers must decide which populations to treat as separate units for protection, breeding, and translocation, and genetics provides the primary evidence. This overview surveys the concep…

Comparative and population genomics allow researchers to find genes shaped by natural selection in cats, revealing the molecular basis of their predatory adaptations. This overview surveys the methods…

Before genomic sequencing, researchers used protein and allozyme variation to compare lion populations and found that the isolated Asiatic lions of Gir harbored strikingly little biochemical genetic v…

Effective population size, the number of individuals genetically contributing to the next generation, is often far smaller than the census count and is a key predictor of how quickly a population lose…

Feline genomes carry endogenous retroviruses, the genomic remnants of ancient viral infections, and the related infectious feline leukemia virus, which together offer insights into host-virus coevolut…

Environmental DNA, the genetic material that animals shed into their surroundings, offers a powerful new way to detect elusive cats without observing them directly. This overview surveys how environme…

Beyond DNA sequence, epigenetic marks and regulatory elements control when and where feline genes are expressed, contributing to traits and potentially to age estimation. This overview surveys emergin…

Beyond the terminal-Pleistocene crash, researchers have proposed that the cheetah experienced more than one demographic bottleneck, including a possible older, deeper reduction in the ancestral lineag…

Cats have lost the ability to make several nutrients that other mammals synthesize, forcing strict dietary dependence on animal tissue. This overview surveys the genetic basis of these requirements, i…

Accurate tiger numbers are central to conservation, and genetic capture-recapture using noninvasive samples complements camera trapping to estimate abundance and density. This overview surveys how DNA…

Despite descending from wildcats only thousands of years ago, domestic cats differ subtly in genetics and behavior, and characterizing this divergence illuminates the domestication process. This overv…

Pumas living near major cities, such as those in the Santa Monica and Santa Ana Mountains of California, are increasingly hemmed in by freeways and development, fragmenting their populations and restr…

Small populations accumulate deleterious mutations, the genetic load, but sustained inbreeding can also expose and remove the most harmful recessive variants through a process called purging. This ove…

Wildlife corridors aim to reconnect fragmented cat populations, and genetics provides a direct test of whether they actually restore gene flow. This overview surveys how landscape and population genet…

Genetic rescue refers to deliberately introducing individuals from another population to boost the fitness of a small, inbred population through new genetic variation. This overview surveys the concep…

In many cats, one sex disperses farther than the other, with males typically moving while females remain near their natal range, a pattern that leaves distinct genetic footprints. This overview survey…

The clouded leopard, long treated as a single species, was shown by genetic and morphological analysis to comprise two distinct species: the mainland clouded leopard and the Sunda clouded leopard of B…