🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Carbone and Gittleman derived a simple, general rule linking carnivore population density to the productivity of the prey base, showing across species that roughly the same amount of prey biomass supp…

Carbone, C. & Gittleman, J.L. · Science · 2002

Hornocker's pioneering radio-telemetry study of cougars in central Idaho was among the first to quantify how a solitary felid affects its ungulate prey. By tracking marked lions through winters and re…

Hornocker, M.G. · Wildlife Monographs · 1970

Knopff and colleagues used GPS location clusters to investigate cougar kills in Alberta, dramatically improving on snow-tracking by detecting small and warm-season prey often missed before. They estim…

Knopff, K.H., Knopff, A.A., Kortello, A. & Boyce, M.S. · Journal of Wildlife Management · 2010

Logan and Sweanor's monograph reports a decade-long study of pumas in New Mexico's San Andres Mountains, one of the most thorough investigations of cougar population and predation ecology. It document…

Logan, K.A. & Sweanor, L.L. · Island Press · 2001

Donadio and Buskirk tested what predicts the intensity of interactions among carnivores, including both killing and avoidance. Analyzing a broad dataset, they found that intraguild predation and aggre…

Donadio, E. & Buskirk, S.W. · The American Naturalist · 2006

Terborgh and colleagues exploited a natural experiment created by a Venezuelan hydroelectric reservoir that isolated land-bridge islands lacking large predators such as jaguars and pumas. On predator-…

Terborgh, J., Lopez, L., Nunez, P. et al. · Science · 2001

Anderson and Lindzey developed and validated a method to estimate cougar kill rates by identifying spatial clusters of GPS locations and field-checking them for carcasses, then modeling which clusters…

Anderson, C.R. & Lindzey, F.G. · Wildlife Society Bulletin · 2003

Foster and colleagues compared the diets of jaguars and pumas in Belize using scat analysis along a gradient of human disturbance. They found the two big cats partition prey to some degree, with jagua…

Foster, R.J., Harmsen, B.J., Valkenburgh, B., Doncaster, C.P. · Journal of Zoology · 2010

Palomares and Caro compiled and analyzed the global record of carnivores killing other carnivores, establishing intraguild predation as a widespread structuring force. They showed that interspecific k…

Palomares, F. & Caro, T.M. · The American Naturalist · 1999

Ripple and Beschta documented a striking felid-driven trophic cascade by contrasting heavily visited Zion Canyon, where human presence depressed cougars, with a nearby low-visitation canyon where coug…

Ripple, W.J. & Beschta, R.L. · Biological Conservation · 2006

Ritchie and Johnson reviewed the mechanisms by which top predators suppress mesopredators and the conditions under which that suppression breaks down. They emphasized that apex carnivores limit smalle…

Ritchie, E.G. & Johnson, C.N. · Ecology Letters · 2009

Elbroch and colleagues documented how pumas function as ecosystem engineers by provisioning rich, dependable carrion. Monitoring puma kills with cameras, they recorded a large diversity of vertebrate…

Elbroch, L.M. et al. · Biological Conservation · 2017

An overview of how the advent of GPS telemetry transformed estimation of kill rates for solitary cats such as pumas, leopards and lynx. The approach identifies spatial clusters of frequent locations,…

A survey of how cats do not take prey at random but select particular age and sex classes, with consequences for prey populations. Felids frequently kill disproportionately young, old or otherwise vul…

A survey of the two principal felid hunting strategies, stalk-and-ambush used by most cats and the high-speed pursuit of the cheetah, and their ecological consequences. Ambush predators rely on cover…

A survey of how restoring large cats to systems where they were lost can rekindle anti-predator behavior in prey and reinstate top-down effects. Where prey have lived without predators, they may becom…

An overview of how solitary cats protect and prolong access to their kills by caching them. Pumas cover carcasses with vegetation and soil and revisit them over several days, while leopards famously h…

An overview of how camera-trap arrays and occupancy modeling are used to study the spatial and temporal relationships between pumas and their prey. By recording where and when cats and prey are detect…

An overview of how the kills of large felids redistribute energy and nutrients through ecosystems. Carcasses and the cats' partly eaten remains create nutrient hotspots that fertilize soils and vegeta…

A survey of the diverse communities of vertebrates and invertebrates that exploit carcasses produced by cats, and how those carcasses structure scavenger interactions. Felid kills attract a succession…

An overview of the long-running question of whether cougar predation adds to or merely substitutes for other deer mortality. If predation is compensatory, cats mainly take individuals that would have…

An overview of cases where puma predation, though ecologically natural, poses risks to endangered or reintroduced prey populations. Examples include predation on woodland caribou, bighorn sheep, and r…

A survey of evidence that cougars can indirectly shape streamside plant communities by limiting and frightening deer. Where cougars are abundant, reduced and more wary deer browse cottonwoods, willows…

A survey of how the kills of large cats function as a form of ecosystem engineering, structuring scavenger communities, nutrient flow and local biodiversity. Because predators such as pumas, leopards…

A survey of the conditions under which big cats switch from hunting to scavenging, and what this means for their ecology. Although large felids lack the scavenging specializations of hyenas and vultur…

An overview of how predation by cats can influence the spread and prevalence of disease in their prey populations. By selectively removing sick, weak or behaviorally abnormal individuals, predators ma…

A survey of how Holling's functional-response framework is applied to cats to describe how their per-capita kill rate changes with prey density. Most felids are thought to show a saturating Type II re…

A survey of how giving-up density experiments quantify the fear that cats and other predators instill in their prey. By offering prey artificial food patches and measuring how much food they leave bef…

An overview of how the spatial scale at which predators and prey use the landscape, their habitat domains, determines the strength and form of fear effects. When an ambush felid has a narrow, predicta…

A survey of the lethal interactions between cats and dogs that share prey and space, a major structuring force in carnivore communities. Lions and hyenas kill wild dogs and cheetahs; pumas and coyotes…