🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Toxoplasma is maintained in both domestic cycles centered on house cats and sylvatic cycles driven by wild felids, and the two intersect in complex ways. This overview surveys how domestic and wild tr…

Beyond killing prey, big cats shape ecosystems through the fear they inspire, altering where and how prey forage. This overview synthesizes research on the landscape of fear, in which the risk of pred…

The puma has the largest latitudinal range of any wild land mammal in the Western Hemisphere, occupying habitats from boreal forest and western mountains to deserts, grasslands, swamps, and tropical j…

One of the eight felid lineages groups three superficially different cats: the puma, the cheetah, and the jaguarundi. This overview explains how molecular phylogenetics revealed this surprising relati…

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…

Pumas are solitary cats with large, overlapping ranges in which males associate with females only briefly during estrus. This overview surveys what telemetry and field studies reveal about puma reprod…

The puma once carried more than thirty named subspecies across its vast range, but molecular work drastically reduced this count. This overview explains how genetic analysis revealed that North Americ…

Standard home ranges flatten an animal's world onto a two-dimensional map, but cats in mountainous terrain move through strongly three-dimensional space, and their ranges shift across seasons. This ov…

Beyond static home ranges, researchers increasingly analyze how often and how regularly an animal returns to particular places, using revisitation and residence-time metrics. This overview describes t…

This overview synthesises research on whether wildlife-tourism revenue increases local tolerance for big cats by offsetting conflict costs. It reviews cases from jaguar tourism in the Pantanal, lion t…

Roads impede wildlife not only by the physical danger of traffic but through sensory disturbance, and this overview examines how noise and artificial light can deter felids from approaching or crossin…

An overview of how large cats can structure ecosystems from the top down, with effects rippling through herbivores to vegetation and beyond. By killing and frightening herbivores, apex felids such as…

This overview examines research on pumas persisting in and around the urbanised landscapes of southern California, epitomised by P-22, the mountain lion that lived for years in Los Angeles's Griffith…

Quantifying how much two animals' ranges overlap is central to questions of territoriality, social structure, and resource competition, and this overview surveys the statistical indices used. Measures…

Predicted corridors are only useful if real animals actually use them, and this overview examines how researchers validate connectivity models against independent movement data. By overlaying GPS trac…

For pumas living in and around Los Angeles, collisions with vehicles on freeways and surface roads are among the most frequent documented causes of death. This overview synthesises telemetry-based mor…

Wild felids living near cities are exposed to pathogens including feline immunodeficiency virus, feline leukemia virus and others, sometimes shared with domestic cats, raising conservation and One Hea…

This overview reviews husbandry interventions promoted to reduce jaguar and puma depredation on cattle in the Venezuelan llanos and elsewhere, including the use of water buffalo, which form defensive…

Water sources and riparian corridors are disproportionately important to felids in human-dominated landscapes, providing drinking water, prey, cover and movement routes through otherwise hostile devel…

This overview examines the downsides and trade-offs of deploying livestock-guarding dogs against big cats, balancing their depredation-reducing benefits. It synthesises research on dog welfare, exposu…

Beyond burning habitat, wildfire produces smoke whose sublethal effects on wildlife, including mammals, are an emerging research area. This overview surveys what is known and hypothesized about smoke…

Wildlife crossings, from large vegetated overpasses to underpasses and culverts, are a primary engineering response to the roads that fragment felid populations near cities. This overview synthesises…

Wildlife overpasses and underpasses are increasingly used to reconnect carnivore populations split by highways, with high-profile projects designed for pumas. This overview surveys the evidence that c…

Detecting and responding to felid disease depends on organized surveillance networks that gather and share data across regions and institutions. This overview surveys the structure and function of wil…

This overview synthesises social-psychological research on how wildlife value orientations, broad belief systems ranging from domination to mutualism, shape attitudes toward large carnivores and toler…

This study used fine-scale GPS and accelerometer data from pumas in the Santa Cruz Mountains to show that cougars respond to human development at multiple spatial scales, avoiding developed areas in w…

Wilmers CC, Wang Y, Nickel B, Houghtaling P, Shakeri Y, Allen ML, Kermish-Wells J, Yovovich V, Williams T · PLoS ONE · 2013

DeVault, Rhodes and Shivik synthesized the neglected ecology of carrion use, arguing that scavenging is far more pervasive and important than traditionally recognized and that most carnivores, includi…

DeVault, T.L., Rhodes, O.E. & Shivik, J.A. · Oikos · 2003

This comprehensive study screened thousands of samples from many felid species plus hyenas for feline immunodeficiency virus and sequenced isolates to map viral diversity. The authors confirmed that F…

J. L. Troyer, J. Pecon-Slattery, M. E. Roelke, et al. · Journal of Virology · 2005

Vickers and colleagues followed GPS-collared pumas across the rapidly urbanizing landscape of southern California to quantify survival and identify the causes of death driving population decline. They…

T. Winston Vickers, Jessica N. Sanchez, Christine K. Johnson, Scott A. Morrison, Randy Botta, Trish Smith, Brian S. Cohen, Patrick R. Huber, Holly B. Ernest, Walter M. Boyce · PLOS ONE · 2015

Drawing on years of telemetry across southern California, this study quantified survival rates and causes of death for pumas living in landscapes increasingly fragmented by roads and development. Vehi…

Vickers TW, Sanchez JN, Johnson CK, Morrison SA, Botta R, Smith T, Cohen BS, Huber PR, Ernest HB, Boyce WM · PLoS ONE · 2015