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🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries
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8 summaries in Felid Genetics & Evolution on wildcat
Research overview: archaeology and genetics of cat domestication
OverviewThe story of how cats joined human society blends zooarchaeology with molecular genetics. This overview surveys evidence from early Neolithic Cyprus, where a cat was buried beside a human roughly nine…
Research overview: genetic divergence between wildcats and domestic cats
OverviewDespite 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…
Research overview: genetics of the Chinese mountain cat
OverviewThe Chinese mountain cat, a poorly known felid endemic to the Tibetan Plateau region, has been the subject of debate over whether it is a distinct species, a wildcat subspecies, and whether it contrib…
Research overview: hybridization between wildcats and domestic cats
OverviewThe European wildcat faces a genetic threat from interbreeding with free-ranging domestic cats, which can erode the wild population's distinct genome through introgression. This overview surveys genet…
Research overview: the Felis lineage and the wildcat complex
OverviewThe 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…
Research overview: the genetic plight of the Scottish wildcat
OverviewThe 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…
The Near Eastern Origin of Cat Domestication
PaperThis 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
The Palaeogenetics of Cat Dispersal in the Ancient World
PaperThis 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