🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

The tabby patterns of cats, mackerel stripes versus blotched swirls, arise from the interaction of genes that establish a prepattern in the developing skin and then translate it into dark and light ha…

The small cats of the ocelot lineage are unusual within the otherwise karyotypically conservative cat family for having a reduced chromosome number, the result of an ancestral chromosome fusion. This…

The domestic cat harbors more than two hundred inherited disorders, many of which mirror human genetic diseases, making it a valuable biomedical model. This overview surveys how feline genetics has il…

Modern cats are divided into eight monophyletic lineages: the Panthera lineage (lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars, snow leopards, clouded leopards), the bay cat lineage, the caracal lineage, the ocelot…

Cats span a remarkable size range, from the kilogram-scale rusty-spotted and black-footed cats to tigers weighing hundreds of kilograms, and body size has evolved repeatedly in different directions. T…

The ability to roar distinguishes the genus Panthera and is tied to specialized anatomy of the larynx and a flexible hyoid apparatus, while smaller cats purr instead. This overview surveys the anatomi…

Advances in sequencing, noninvasive sampling, and analysis are transforming how genetics informs cat conservation. This overview surveys emerging directions, including reference-quality genomes for ev…

The Asiatic lion survives as a single population in and around the Gir Forest of western India, having recovered from perhaps a few dozen individuals around the start of the twentieth century. This ov…

The Scottish wildcat, the last wild felid native to Britain, is threatened less by direct persecution than by hybridization with domestic and feral cats that has blurred its genetic distinctiveness. T…

Most domestic cats are random-bred, but a few dozen recognized breeds have been developed over the past century, providing a resource for genetic study. This overview surveys research using genome-wid…

Cats are crepuscular and nocturnal hunters with eyes adapted for low-light performance, including a reflective tapetum lucidum and a rod-rich retina. This overview surveys the genetic and developmenta…

Crosses between lions and tigers in captivity produce ligers and tigons, hybrids notable for unusual growth patterns, with ligers often growing larger than either parent. This overview surveys the bio…

Black jaguars, often called black panthers, occur naturally within jaguar populations and result from a dominant mutation in the melanocortin-1 receptor gene, distinct from the recessive melanism of t…

The orange coloration of cats is governed by an X-linked locus, which is why most calico and tortoiseshell cats are female and display a patchwork of orange and black created by X-chromosome inactivat…

White lions, associated with the Timbavati region of South Africa, display a pale cream to near-white coat caused by a recessive color variant rather than true albinism, since they retain pigmented ey…

Cats are obligate carnivores, physiologically dependent on a meat diet, and comparative genomics has uncovered the molecular underpinnings of this specialization. This overview surveys findings that f…

First described in the early twentieth century from southern Africa, the king cheetah's bold blotches and stripes led some naturalists to propose it as a distinct species, Acinonyx rex. This overview…

The leopard cat lineage of Asia includes the widespread leopard cat, the fishing cat, the flat-headed cat, and the rusty-spotted cat, along with the related Pallas's cat. This overview surveys the gen…

One of the most counterintuitive results of felid molecular phylogenetics was that the cheetah, long treated as a unique outlier, belongs to a New World puma lineage alongside the puma and the jaguaru…

The modern cats diversified into roughly forty species within the last eleven million years, a relatively rapid radiation that left a tangled phylogeny marked by short internal branches. This overview…

Genetic tools are increasingly used to combat the illegal trade in cats and their parts, from tiger bones and skins to confiscated live animals. This overview surveys how forensic genetics assigns sei…

This study identified the gene responsible for the dramatic blotched coat of the king cheetah and the related variation between mackerel and blotched tabby patterns in domestic cats. The authors mappe…

Christopher B. Kaelin, Gregory S. Barsh, et al. · Science · 2012

The big cats of the genus Panthera proved historically difficult to resolve because of rapid speciation and conflicting gene trees. This study assembled a large multilocus supermatrix and applied both…

Brian W. Davis, Gang Li, William J. Murphy · Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution · 2010

This study analyzed lion population structure and history using both the lions' own genetic markers and the genomes of feline immunodeficiency virus strains that infect them. By treating the virus as…

Agostinho Antunes, Stephen J. O'Brien, et al. · PLoS Genetics · 2008

This study combined genomes from modern lions across Africa and India with ancient DNA from extinct cave lions to reconstruct the deep history of the lion lineage. The authors estimated that cave lion…

Marc de Manuel, Ross Barnett, Tomas Marques-Bonet, et al. · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2020

This study resolved the long-standing mystery of the white tiger by mapping the trait in a captive pedigree and identifying a single amino-acid change in the pigment transporter gene SLC45A2. The vari…

Xiao Xu, Shu-Jin Luo, et al. · Current Biology · 2013

This landmark study reconstructed the evolutionary tree of all 37 living cat species using mitochondrial and nuclear DNA sequences combined with molecular dating calibrated by the fossil record. The a…

Warren E. Johnson, Eduardo Eizirik, Jill Pecon-Slattery, William J. Murphy, Agostinho Antunes, Emma Teeling, Stephen J. O'Brien · Science · 2006

This study traced the ancestry of the domestic cat by sampling wildcats across their range and comparing mitochondrial DNA from hundreds of wild and domestic individuals. The authors showed that all d…

Carlos A. Driscoll, Marilyn Menotti-Raymond, Stephen J. O'Brien, et al. · Science · 2007

This study sequenced ancient DNA from cat remains spanning roughly ten thousand years across Europe, the Near East, and Africa to trace how cats spread alongside humans. The authors identified two maj…

Claudio Ottoni, Eva-Maria Geigl, Thierry Grange, et al. · Nature Ecology & Evolution · 2017

This study produced the first reference genome of the tiger, sequenced from an Amur tiger, and compared it with newly generated lion and snow leopard genome data. The authors identified genetic signat…

Yun Sung Cho, Jong Bhak, et al. · Nature Communications · 2013