🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

This landmark genetic study showed that a multi-lane freeway sharply restricted movement and gene flow in bobcats and coyotes in the fragmented hills north of Los Angeles. Combining radio-telemetry wi…

Riley SPD, Pollinger JP, Sauvajot RM, York EC, Bromley C, Fuller TK, Wayne RK · Molecular Ecology · 2006

By fitting GPS collars to leopards living among farms and villages in western Maharashtra, this study quantified how big cats navigate a landscape saturated with people. Collared leopards were strongl…

Odden M, Athreya V, Rattan S, Linnell JDC · PLoS ONE · 2014

This study established a striking association between exposure to anticoagulant rodenticides and severe notoedric mange in bobcats and mountain lions across urban southern California. Necropsies and t…

Riley SPD, Bromley C, Poppenga RH, Uzal FA, Whited L, Sauvajot RM · Journal of Wildlife Management · 2007

This long-term study screened bobcats across the urbanizing landscape of southern California and found pervasive exposure to second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides, with the great majority of te…

Serieys LEK, Armenta TC, Moriarty JG, Boydston EE, Lyren LM, Poppenga RH, Crooks KR, Wayne RK, Riley SPD · Ecotoxicology · 2015

This influential review synthesised how animals adjust behaviour to survive in cities, organising responses into categories such as altered activity timing, boldness, foraging on anthropogenic food, a…

Lowry H, Lill A, Wong BBM · Biological Reviews · 2013

This influential study documented free-ranging leopards living at high density in the densely populated, intensively cultivated countryside of Maharashtra, India, far from any protected forest. Using…

Athreya V, Odden M, Linnell JDC, Krishnaswamy J, Karanth U · PLoS ONE · 2013

This widely cited review examined how carnivores exploit cities, surveying which traits predispose species to urban living and how urban carnivores differ in diet, ranging, activity and behaviour from…

Bateman PW, Fleming PA · Journal of Zoology · 2012

This widely read synthesis assembled the scientific case that free-ranging domestic cats are a significant driver of wildlife declines and a vector for zoonotic disease, while examining the contentiou…

Marra PP, Santella C · Princeton University Press · 2016

This population-viability analysis integrated demographic data, genetic measures and landscape connectivity for the small puma population isolated in the Santa Monica Mountains within metropolitan Los…

Benson JF, Mahoney PJ, Sikich JA, Serieys LEK, Pollinger JP, Ernest HB, Riley SPD · Proceedings of the Royal Society B · 2016

This early conservation-planning study modelled how much habitat and what corridor configuration cougars need to persist in fragmenting southern California landscapes. By analysing demography and move…

Beier P · Conservation Biology · 1993

This radio-telemetry study tracked young cougars dispersing through the developing landscape of southern California, documenting the routes they used, the barriers they faced and the mortality they su…

Beier P · Journal of Wildlife Management · 1995

This study quantified prey returned by house cats living beside a suburban nature preserve, distinguishing cats kept partly indoors from those roaming freely, and estimated the predation they imposed…

Kays RW, DeWan AA · Animal Conservation · 2004

This study examined how bobcats and coyotes responded to urban development and habitat fragmentation across the Santa Monica Mountains region near Los Angeles. Using radio-telemetry, the authors found…

Riley SPD, Sauvajot RM, Fuller TK, York EC, Kamradt DA, Bromley C, Wayne RK · Conservation Biology · 2003

This camera-trap study examined how a community of carnivores, including bobcats and pumas, was distributed across an urbanisation gradient in southern California, relating species occurrence and rich…

Ordenana MA, Crooks KR, Boydston EE, Fisher RN, et al · Journal of Mammalogy · 2010

Building on long-term monitoring of pumas around Los Angeles, this study modelled how genetic and demographic factors could interact to drive small, urbanization-isolated populations toward an extinct…

Benson JF, Mahoney PJ, Vickers TW, Sikich JA, Beier P, Riley SPD, Ernest HB, Boyce WM · Ecological Applications · 2019

This experimental study demonstrated that the mere sound of human voices induced fear responses cascading from pumas down to mice in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Playback of human speech caused pumas to…

Suraci JP, Clinchy M, Zanette LY, Wilmers CC · Ecology Letters · 2019

Using genetic samples from pumas across southern California, this study revealed that freeways and urban development had carved the regional population into fragments with reduced gene flow and signs…

Ernest HB, Vickers TW, Morrison SA, Buchalski MR, Boyce WM · PLoS ONE · 2014

This study used radio-telemetry to characterise the movements of owned and un-owned free-roaming domestic cats in an urbanising landscape, revealing that un-owned cats ranged over far larger areas tha…

Horn JA, Mateus-Pinilla N, Warner RE, Heske EJ · Journal of Wildlife Management · 2011

This study quantified an unexpected ecosystem service delivered by leopards inhabiting Sanjay Gandhi National Park inside greater Mumbai. By modelling leopard diet, in which feral and stray dogs form…

Braczkowski AR, OBryan CJ, Stringer MJ, Watson JEM, Possingham HP, Beyer HL · Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment · 2018

In this widely cited study from San Diego habitat fragments, the authors showed that where bobcats and coyotes disappeared from small, isolated canyons, populations of smaller predators such as domest…

Crooks KR, Soule ME · Nature · 1999

This camera-trap study in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California examined how mesopredators adjusted their spatial and temporal activity in response to both pumas and human development. The authors fo…

Wang Y, Allen ML, Wilmers CC · Biological Conservation · 2015

Using GPS-tracking data from many mammal species worldwide, this study found that animals in areas with high human footprint moved substantially shorter distances than those in wilder areas, indicatin…

Tucker MA, Bohning-Gaese K, Fagan WF, Fryxell JM, et al · Science · 2018

This study compared how a suite of carnivores, including bobcats, responded to the size and isolation of urban habitat fragments in coastal southern California. Bobcats and other area-sensitive specie…

Crooks KR · Conservation Biology · 2002

The worlds only wild Asiatic lions live in and around Gir in Gujarat, India, where their expanding population increasingly occupies agricultural land, villages and the periphery of towns. This overvie…

The European wildcat occupies forest and agricultural mosaics across Europe, where proximity to settlements brings hybridisation with domestic cats, road mortality and habitat fragmentation. This over…

High-resolution GPS tracking combined with accelerometers and other biologgers has transformed the study of how felids behave near people, enabling fine-scale analysis of movement, activity, energetic…

GPS-collaring of fishing cats in Colombo has revealed how individuals thread through a labyrinth of canals, marsh fragments, gardens and roads, exposing the connectivity needs of a wetland predator in…

P-22 became the most famous urban mountain lion in the world after crossing two of the busiest freeways in the United States to settle in Griffith Park, a small island of habitat surrounded by central…

Cities concentrate food in forms that wildlife can exploit, from garbage and compost to pet food, livestock, abundant commensal rodents and feral animals, and these anthropogenic subsidies underpin ma…

Urban noise from traffic, construction and human activity can mask acoustic cues, induce stress and alter the behaviour of wildlife, including felids that rely on hearing for hunting and vigilance. Th…