🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

This overview reviews the contested practice of voluntarily relocating villages out of tiger-reserve cores in India to reduce human-tiger conflict and create inviolate breeding habitat. It synthesises…

Tigers use a repertoire of calls, including powerful roars rich in low-frequency and infrasonic energy that carry far through forest. This overview synthesizes research on how these vocalizations adve…

Unlike most cats, tigers readily enter water and swim, and providing pools is considered an important welfare and enrichment feature for the species. This overview surveys evidence and practice around…

Managers of reserves holding lions, tigers, and other cats sometimes provision artificial water to buffer wildlife against drought, a practice with contested ecological consequences. This overview sur…

Private ownership of tigers, lions and other big cats, historically widespread in some countries, raises acute welfare and public-safety concerns. This overview surveys the issues: inadequate enclosur…

Cub-petting attractions, where the public pays to handle tiger, lion and other big-cat cubs, depend on a continuous supply of young animals within a narrow handleable age window. This overview surveys…

Beyond white tigers, other captive felid colour variants, white lions and the patterned king cheetah, raise similar questions about breeding for appearance. This overview surveys the genetics of these…

Camera traps illuminate night scenes either with a bright white (xenon or LED) flash that yields full-color images or with infrared illumination that produces monochrome photos invisible to most anima…

Although domestic cats have vertical-slit pupils, large felids such as lions and tigers have round pupils, a contrast that has attracted scientific attention. This overview surveys the explanation tie…

Cat classification is not merely academic; it directly shapes how cats are protected. This overview explains how taxonomy underlies Red List assessments, CITES appendices, and national legislation, al…

Black panthers are melanistic leopards (or jaguars), and their existence is often misunderstood as indicating a separate species or subspecies. This overview explains the genetics of leopard melanism,…

Genetic tools are increasingly used to combat the illegal trade in cats and their parts, from tiger bones and skins to confiscated live animals. This overview surveys how forensic genetics assigns sei…

This pioneering study quantified how projected sea-level rise threatens the tigers of the Sundarbans, the world's largest mangrove forest and home to a unique population of Bengal tigers. Using elevat…

Loucks, C., Barber-Meyer, S., Hossain, M.A.A., Barlow, A., Chowdhury, R.M. · Climatic Change · 2010

Borchers and Efford provided the rigorous likelihood-based foundation for spatially explicit capture-recapture, formalizing how to estimate density when detectors such as camera stations have fixed lo…

David L. Borchers, Murray G. Efford · Biometrics · 2008

This widely cited review synthesized the theory and practice of species distribution models (SDMs), the statistical tools that relate species occurrence to environmental predictors to map current and…

Elith, J., Leathwick, J.R. · Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics · 2009

Otis, Burnham, White, and Anderson produced the foundational monograph on closed-population capture-recapture, defining the suite of models that allow for variation in capture probability over time, b…

David L. Otis, Kenneth P. Burnham, Gary C. White, David R. Anderson · Wildlife Monographs · 1978

This sweeping review synthesized the global status of the world's largest carnivores, including big cats such as tigers, lions, and leopards, and documented that most are declining and have lost large…

Ripple WJ, Estes JA, Beschta RL, et al. · Science · 2014

This influential review synthesized the global status of the largest carnivores, including big cats such as lions, tigers, leopards, and jaguars, documenting widespread range contraction and populatio…

Ripple, W.J., Estes, J.A., Beschta, R.L., Wilmers, C.C., Ritchie, E.G., Hebblewhite, M., et al. · Science · 2014

Mason's review synthesised decades of work on stereotypic behaviour across captive species, defining stereotypies as repetitive, invariant movements with no obvious goal. She argued they arise from fr…

Mason GJ · Animal Behaviour · 1991

The big cats of the genus Panthera proved historically difficult to resolve because of rapid speciation and conflicting gene trees. This study assembled a large multilocus supermatrix and applied both…

Brian W. Davis, Gang Li, William J. Murphy · Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution · 2010

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 experimental study assessed which domesticated species could be infected by SARS-CoV-2. The authors found that cats were highly susceptible: inoculated cats replicated the virus efficiently in th…

J. Shi, Z. Wen, G. Zhong, et al. · Science · 2020

This comprehensive edited volume brought together leading researchers to synthesize the science of wild cats, spanning felid evolution, behavior, ecology, and the full breadth of conservation challeng…

Macdonald DW, Loveridge AJ (eds) · 2010

This synthesis introduced the concept of Tiger Conservation Landscapes, mapping where tigers could still be found across Asia and classifying these areas by their potential to support recovery. The au…

Dinerstein E, Loucks C, Wikramanayake E, et al. · BioScience · 2007

This study resolved the long-standing mystery of the white tiger by mapping the trait in a captive pedigree and identifying a single amino-acid change in the pigment transporter gene SLC45A2. The vari…

Xiao Xu, Shu-Jin Luo, et al. · Current Biology · 2013

This study produced the first reference genome of the tiger, sequenced from an Amur tiger, and compared it with newly generated lion and snow leopard genome data. The authors identified genetic signat…

Yun Sung Cho, Jong Bhak, et al. · Nature Communications · 2013

Lyons, Young and Deag surveyed multiple felid species across enclosures differing in size, complexity and feeding routine to identify what most affects behaviour. They found that enclosure usage and a…

Lyons J, Young RJ, Deag JM · Zoo Biology · 1997

Xu and colleagues identified the molecular cause of the white tiger phenotype, mapping it to a single amino-acid change in the pigment gene SLC45A2. Using a captive pedigree and genome analysis, they…

Xu X, Dong GX, Hu XS, Miao L, Zhang XL, Zhang DL, et al · Current Biology · 2013

Why can lions and tigers roar while domestic cats and cheetahs cannot? This comparative anatomical study examined the hyoid apparatus, the chain of bones supporting the larynx and tongue, across felid…

Gerald Weissengruber and colleagues · Journal of Anatomy · 2002

A decade after naming the concept, Laundre, Hernandez and Ripple reviewed how the landscape of fear had matured into a framework for understanding nonconsumptive predator effects. They synthesized evi…

Laundre, J.W., Hernandez, L. & Ripple, W.J. · The Open Ecology Journal · 2010