🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Natural history museum collections preserve specimens spanning centuries, providing a genetic archive of felid populations as they existed before recent declines. This overview surveys how museum geno…

The rate at which new mutations arise sets the pace of evolution and the recovery of diversity in small populations, yet it has been difficult to measure directly in cats. This overview surveys effort…

Where the ranges of the bobcat and the Canada lynx overlap along the southern edge of the lynx distribution, the two species occasionally hybridize, producing animals sometimes called blynx. This over…

Snow leopards inhabit remote, rugged mountains where direct observation is nearly impossible, making noninvasive genetics essential for studying them. This overview surveys how scat-based DNA analysis…

Because most wild cats are elusive and difficult to capture, conservation geneticists increasingly rely on noninvasive samples such as scat, hair, and shed cells to obtain DNA without handling the ani…

Cats rely heavily on smell and on the vomeronasal system for detecting pheromones in social and reproductive communication, including the flehmen response. This overview surveys the genetics of feline…

The Panthera lineage contains the roaring cats and their relatives and represents the earliest branch of the modern felid radiation. This overview surveys genetic and fossil evidence for an Asian orig…

While genetic rescue can revive inbred populations, mixing divergent populations carries a theoretical risk of outbreeding depression, where hybrids are less fit due to disrupted local adaptation or g…

Zoos and breeding programs maintain studbooks to manage the genetics of captive cat populations, aiming to retain diversity and avoid inbreeding across generations. This overview surveys how pedigree…

Reconstructing the felid tree has driven the adoption of increasingly sophisticated analytical methods, from single-gene trees to genome-wide coalescent and network approaches. This overview surveys h…

The lynx lineage comprises four species: the Eurasian lynx, the Iberian lynx, the Canada lynx, and the bobcat. This overview surveys the molecular phylogeny of the group, the timing of their divergenc…

This overview synthesizes the deep-time evolution of cats, from the Oligocene Proailurus and Miocene Pseudaelurus stem felids through the divergence of the conical-toothed Felinae and the sabertoothed…

The jaguar, the largest cat of the Americas, ranges from the southwestern United States to Argentina, and genetic studies have examined how this vast distribution is structured. This overview surveys…

The Eurasian lynx is the most widespread lynx, ranging across the forests of Europe and Asia, and has been the subject of both phylogeographic study and reintroduction efforts. This overview surveys t…

Genetic studies have reshaped lion taxonomy by revealing a primary division between a northern group, encompassing the Asiatic, West African, and Central African lions, and a southern and eastern Afri…

Habitat loss and fragmentation increasingly isolate cat populations into small patches separated by inhospitable terrain, reducing effective population size and gene flow. This overview surveys how co…

The Canada lynx is tightly linked to boreal forests and the cyclical abundance of snowshoe hares, and its genetics reflect both high mobility and sensitivity to habitat at its southern range edge. Thi…

Although the snow leopard was traditionally treated as a single undivided species, genetic studies using noninvasive samples have proposed dividing it into several geographic subspecies or management…

Since the first lightly sequenced domestic cat genome, feline genomics has advanced to highly contiguous, chromosome-level assemblies for the domestic cat and an expanding set of wild species. This ov…

Whole-genome sequencing reveals long stretches where an individual inherited identical segments from both parents, called runs of homozygosity, which accumulate with inbreeding and small population si…

The deep origins of the cat family trace to small civet-like carnivores of the Oligocene and Miocene, notably Proailurus and the later Pseudaelurus, from which both the modern cats and the sabertooths…

The leopard is the most widely distributed big cat, ranging across Africa and Asia, and genetic studies have refined its subspecies framework. This overview surveys evidence that African leopards form…

Although cheetahs are genetically depleted overall, they are not uniform across their range, and several subspecies are recognized, including the southern and eastern African cheetahs, the northwest A…

The American lion, Panthera atrox, was one of the largest cats ever to live, roaming Pleistocene North America south of the ice sheets. This overview surveys ancient-DNA evidence indicating that the A…

The Felis lineage contains the domestic cat and its closest wild relatives, including the European wildcat, the African and Near Eastern wildcat, the sand cat, the jungle cat, the black-footed cat, an…

The bay cat lineage comprises three Asian cats: the Asian golden cat, the bay cat of Borneo, and the marbled cat. This overview surveys the genetic evidence establishing this lineage as one of the eig…

The black-footed cat, one of the smallest wild cats, is a southern African member of the Felis lineage notable for its fierce hunting and, in captivity, for inherited kidney disease. This overview sur…

The caracal lineage groups three African cats: the caracal, the serval, and the African golden cat. This overview surveys the molecular evidence uniting these morphologically diverse species into a si…

The Asiatic cheetah survives only in Iran, reduced to a few dozen individuals, the last remnant of a subspecies that once ranged across southwest Asia and India. This overview surveys genetic studies…

The lion's mane is a sexually selected ornament whose size and color vary with age, testosterone, climate, and individual condition. This overview surveys what is known about the developmental and hor…