🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

In this follow-up, Durant used experimental playbacks and detailed observation to show that Serengeti cheetahs actively avoid lions and spotted hyenas at fine spatial and temporal scales, moving away…

Durant, S.M. · Behavioral Ecology · 2000

Wilson and colleagues fitted free-ranging cheetahs with custom collars carrying GPS and inertial sensors to capture the biomechanics of hunting in the wild rather than on a track. The data overturned…

Alan M. Wilson, J. C. Lowe, K. Roskilly, P. E. Hudson, K. A. Golabek, J. W. McNutt · Nature · 2013

This landmark study fitted free-ranging cheetahs in Botswana with custom solar-powered GPS-IMU collars logging position, acceleration, and turning at high frequency during real hunts. Rather than conf…

Wilson, A.M.; Lowe, J.C.; Roskilly, K.; Hudson, P.E.; Golabek, K.A.; McNutt, J.W. · Nature · 2013

This study used geometric morphometrics to chart how skull shape evolved across sabertooth cats and their conical-toothed relatives. By quantifying cranial landmarks in many felid species, the authors…

Graham J. Slater, Blaire Van Valkenburgh · Paleobiology · 2008

Waldchen and Mader reviewed the state of automated species identification from images across taxa, covering the progression from hand-crafted features to deep learning and the datasets, benchmarks, an…

Jana Waldchen, Patrick Mader · Methods in Ecology and Evolution · 2018

Tabak and colleagues trained and evaluated deep-learning models on large North American camera-trap datasets, achieving high species-classification accuracy and demonstrating practical workflows for e…

Michael A. Tabak, Mohammad S. Norouzzadeh, David W. Wolfson, Steven J. Sweeney, Kurt C. VerCauteren, et al. · Methods in Ecology and Evolution · 2019

This comparative study examined taste-receptor genes across a range of carnivorous mammals and found widespread loss of taste capabilities tied to diet. Building on the earlier discovery that cats lac…

Peihua Jiang, Jesusa Josue, Xia Li, et al. · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2012

This landmark analysis showed that the size of a male lion coalition strongly predicts its tenure over prides and its lifetime reproductive output. Larger coalitions, often formed by littermates or co…

Bygott, J. D., Bertram, B. C. R., Hanby, J. P. · Nature · 1979

This study combined ancient and modern mitochondrial DNA to reconstruct the lion's maternal history, including extinct populations such as the Barbary and Cape lions. The authors used a spatially expl…

Barnett R, Yamaguchi N, Shapiro B, et al. · BMC Evolutionary Biology · 2014

This experiment showed that kittens learned an instrumental task more readily by watching their own mother than by watching an unfamiliar adult female, and faster still than kittens learning alone. Th…

Phyllis Chesler · Science · 1969

This paper introduced the MaxEnt method, a maximum-entropy approach for modeling species distributions from presence-only data, which became one of the most widely used tools in the field. Because muc…

Phillips, S.J., Anderson, R.P., Schapire, R.E. · Ecological Modelling · 2006

Sheriff and colleagues reviewed how glucocorticoid hormones are measured to assess stress in wild and captive animals, covering blood, faecal, urinary, salivary and hair sampling. They discussed the s…

Sheriff MJ, Dantzer B, Delehanty B, Palme R, Boonstra R · Oecologia · 2011

Hill and Broom reviewed the conceptual and practical challenges of assessing welfare in zoo animals, applying Broom's coping-based definition to the captive context. They surveyed the range of indicat…

Hill SP, Broom DM · Zoo Biology · 2009

This influential study coined the practical demonstration of mesopredator release, showing that the decline of a dominant predator can unleash smaller predators with cascading harm to prey. In fragmen…

Crooks, K.R. & Soule, M.E. · Nature · 1999

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

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

Guillera-Arroita reviewed how imperfect detection affects inference about species distributions, range dynamics, and community composition, and how occupancy-style models correct the resulting biases.…

Gurutzeta Guillera-Arroita · Ecography · 2017

This influential study identified the molecular basis of black coats across multiple cat species and showed that melanism evolved independently several times in the family. The authors found that mela…

Eduardo Eizirik, Stephen J. O'Brien, et al. · Current Biology · 2003

This study used genetic data to investigate the small spotted cats of South America and uncovered a cryptic species hidden within what was called the oncilla or tigrina. The authors found that northea…

Trigo TC, Schneider A, de Oliveira TG, et al. · Current Biology · 2013

This study used multiple genetic markers to compare mainland and Sunda island clouded leopards and found divergence comparable to that between well-recognized cat species. The authors showed that clou…

Buckley-Beason VA, Johnson WE, Nash WG, et al. · Current Biology · 2006

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

Karanth and colleagues applied occupancy modeling to landscape-scale tiger monitoring, using sign and detection surveys across large areas where camera-based density estimation everywhere would be imp…

K. Ullas Karanth, Arjun M. Gopalaswamy, N. Samba Kumar, Srinivas Vaidyanathan, James D. Nichols, Darryl I. MacKenzie · Journal of Applied Ecology · 2011

Building on long-term tracking of marked mountain lions, this study described how pumas organize their use of space through a land-tenure system maintained largely by mutual avoidance. Resident adults…

Seidensticker, J. C., Hornocker, M. G., Wiles, W. V., Messick, J. P. · Wildlife Monographs · 1973

This landmark monograph reported one of the first multi-year radio-telemetry studies of cougars, conducted in the rugged Idaho Primitive Area. By collaring and following individual lions, the team doc…

John Seidensticker, Maurice Hornocker, Wilbur Wiles, John Messick · Wildlife Monographs · 1973

This early field study examined how jaguars move through the seasonally inundated landscape of the Brazilian Pantanal, combining direct observation and tracking to describe ranging in relation to wate…

Schaller, G. B., Crawshaw, P. G. · Biotropica · 1980

McCarthy, Fuller, and Munkhtsog reported one of the first detailed studies of snow leopard movement, using VHF telemetry to track cats in the mountains of southwestern Mongolia. Despite the constraint…

Thomas M. McCarthy, Todd K. Fuller, Bariushaa Munkhtsog · Biological Conservation · 2005

Tucker and a large international consortium pooled GPS tracking data from many terrestrial mammal species to test whether human footprint constrains animal movement, finding that mammals in areas of h…

Marlee A. Tucker and colleagues · Science · 2018

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

Pion, Kittleson, Rogers and Morris linked dilated cardiomyopathy in domestic cats to taurine deficiency and showed that supplementation could reverse the heart failure. The discovery confirmed taurine…

Pion PD, Kittleson MD, Rogers QR, Morris JG · Science · 1987