🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

This morphological revision used skull measurements and pelage to assess variation among mainland Southeast Asian tigers and supported recognition of the Malayan tiger as distinct from the Indochinese…

Mazak JH, Groves CP · Mammalian Biology · 2006

This study sequenced whole genomes from tigers representing the major living populations and found strong genomic support for distinct subspecies despite the tiger's recent origin. The authors detecte…

Liu YC, Sun X, Driscoll C, et al. · Current Biology · 2018

This genomic study sequenced multiple Panthera species and found pervasive evidence that gene flow between lineages, not just simple branching, shaped big cat evolution. The authors detected introgres…

Figueiro HV, Li G, Trindade FJ, et al. · Science Advances · 2017

This study extracted DNA from museum specimens of the extinct Caspian tiger and compared it with living subspecies, revealing that the Caspian and Amur tigers were extremely close genetically, essenti…

Driscoll CA, Yamaguchi N, Bar-Gal GK, et al. · PLoS ONE · 2009

An early molecular study of the big cats that used mitochondrial 12S rRNA and cytochrome b sequences to probe relationships within the Panthera group. This work was among the first to apply DNA sequen…

Janczewski DN, Modi WS, Stephens JC, O'Brien SJ · Molecular Biology and Evolution · 1995

This morphological study reconstructed relationships among the pantherine cats while explicitly incorporating fossil taxa and testing how missing data affect tree inference. Working from cranial and s…

Christiansen P · Cladistics · 2008

This study analyzed mitochondrial and microsatellite markers from tigers across their range and provided the first comprehensive molecular framework supporting multiple traditional subspecies. The aut…

Luo SJ, Kim JH, Johnson WE, et al. · PLoS Biology · 2004

This study argued that tigers are best treated as just two subspecies, a continental form and a Sunda-island form, rather than the traditional six or nine. Reanalyzing morphological, ecological, molec…

Wilting A, Courtiol A, Christiansen P, et al. · Science Advances · 2015

Tigers vary in ground color, stripe density, and body size across their range, and these traits were historically used to distinguish subspecies. This overview examines how reliable coat characters ar…

How tigers are classified directly affects how they are conserved. This overview explains the practical stakes of the subspecies debate: subspecies define studbook management, set boundaries for trans…

Several tiger populations vanished in the 20th century, including the Caspian, Bali, and Javan tigers, and ancient or historical DNA has been used to clarify their relationships. This overview surveys…

Conservation genetics distinguishes formal subspecies from management units and evolutionarily significant units, and this distinction is central to tiger planning. This overview explains how managers…

Before and alongside molecular work, tiger subspecies were assessed by measuring skulls and body proportions. This overview explains how craniometric analyses, comparing dimensions across museum speci…

The Sunda islands once held three tiger populations, of which only the Sumatran survives; the Bali and Javan tigers are extinct. This overview examines how these island forms figure in tiger taxonomy.…

The Malayan tiger of the southern Malay Peninsula was formally separated from the Indochinese tiger in the early 2000s based on molecular evidence of genetic distinctiveness. This overview describes h…

The South China tiger, historically regarded as the stem population from which other tigers radiated, is functionally extinct in the wild and survives only in captivity. This overview examines its tax…

Few felid controversies are as prominent as how many subspecies of tiger exist. This overview lays out the competing positions: a conservative two-subspecies scheme (mainland and Sunda) advanced on co…

Relationships among the big cats long resisted resolution because of short internal branches and conflicting markers. This study assembled a large multi-gene dataset and applied both concatenated supe…

Davis BW, Li G, Murphy WJ · Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution · 2010

This study produced the first reference genome for the tiger and compared it with newly sequenced lion and snow leopard genomes to investigate big cat evolution and adaptation. The authors identified…

Cho YS, Hu L, Hou H, et al. · Nature Communications · 2013