🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Bobcats in fire-prone chaparral and shrubland of the western United States face landscapes shaped by both wildfire and urban development. This overview surveys how bobcats respond to fire through move…

Bobcats increasingly occupy urban and suburban environments, and this overview reviews research on these populations. GPS-tracking studies in metropolitan areas document bobcats using remnant natural…

Modern tracking technologies have transformed how disease is studied in elusive wild cats. This overview surveys the use of camera traps and GPS telemetry to investigate felid disease ecology, from de…

Camera traps, often paired with individual identification by coat patterns and spatial capture-recapture models, are a cornerstone method for studying secretive felids in human-dominated landscapes. T…

Cities support large populations of commensal rodents fed by human waste, and these rodents form a critical prey subsidy for small and medium urban felids from bobcats to leopard cats and jungle cats.…

This overview compares the four lynx species, the Eurasian, Canada, Iberian, and the bobcat, highlighting how a shared body plan has diversified across habitats and prey. All share short tails, ear tu…

Wildlife crossings are often designed with large mammals in mind, but smaller felids such as bobcats have distinct preferences, and this overview examines how they use such structures. Monitoring show…

Felids living at the edges of cities, such as bobcats and mountain lions in California, face a distinctive disease landscape shaped by human activity. This overview surveys the disease ecology of urba…

The Canada lynx and bobcat are North American members of the lynx lineage whose relationships and occasional hybridization illuminate felid speciation. This overview examines their divergence, with mo…

Domestic cats occupy the urban carnivore community alongside native mesopredators and larger carnivores, and their abundance is shaped by interactions with these species. This overview synthesises res…

Habitat edges created by urban development alter microclimate, vegetation, prey, disturbance and predator interactions, shaping how felids use the boundary between natural and built land. This overvie…

The wildland-urban interface, where development meets wildland vegetation, is expanding and is the zone where climate-driven fire most directly intersects with cat populations like urban-edge pumas an…

Documented first in southern California felids and later in Cape Town caracals, anticoagulant-rodenticide exposure in wild cats has emerged as a global phenomenon wherever predators hunt poisoned rode…

Parks, greenbelts, riparian corridors, vacant lots and vegetated drainage form a network of green infrastructure that urban felids exploit for shelter, hunting and movement. This overview synthesises…

Concentrated, predictable food in cities allows carnivores to meet their needs over smaller areas, contributing to the strikingly compressed home ranges documented in urban felids from leopards to pum…

Hybridization between cat species, both in captivity and occasionally in the wild, has played a larger role in felid evolution than once appreciated. This overview surveys the spectrum from ancient in…

Landscape genetics, combining molecular markers with spatial models, has become essential for detecting how roads and development fragment felid populations and for prioritising connectivity. This ove…

The bobcat, a widespread and adaptable North American cat, has become a model for studying how roads, development, and habitat fragmentation shape gene flow in carnivores. This overview surveys geneti…

Where the ranges of the bobcat and the Canada lynx overlap along the southern edge of the lynx distribution, the two species occasionally hybridize, producing animals sometimes called blynx. This over…

Many felids become more strictly nocturnal as human activity increases, a pattern documented from Indian leopards to Californian bobcats and pumas. This overview synthesises camera-trap and telemetry…

Notoedric mange, caused by Notoedres cati mites, has driven severe, sometimes locally devastating outbreaks in bobcats, particularly around urbanizing areas of California. This overview synthesizes th…

Periodic outbreaks of notoedric mange have caused steep, localised declines in urban and suburban bobcat populations, most prominently in southern California. This overview synthesises research connec…

The lynx lineage comprises four species: the Eurasian lynx, the Iberian lynx, the Canada lynx, and the bobcat. This overview surveys the molecular phylogeny of the group, the timing of their divergenc…

The Canada lynx is tightly linked to boreal forests and the cyclical abundance of snowshoe hares, and its genetics reflect both high mobility and sensitivity to habitat at its southern range edge. Thi…

A survey of how felids exploit the seasonal pulse of newborn ungulates, a period of high vulnerability that can dominate annual recruitment losses. During calving and fawning seasons, abundant, hidden…

Roads affect cats through direct mortality and through the barrier effect that fragments populations, a central theme in carnivore conservation. This overview surveys research quantifying how highways…

Urban infrastructure shapes the genetics of bobcat populations by impeding movement and gene flow across roads and developed corridors. This overview synthesises landscape-genetics studies, several fr…

During his time in Griffith Park, the Los Angeles puma P-22 developed notoedric mange and was found to have been exposed to anticoagulant rodenticides, mirroring a pattern documented in regional bobca…

A survey of how the Canada lynx's large, well-furred feet give it an advantage hunting snowshoe hares in deep, soft snow, and how snow conditions structure its competition with other predators. The ly…

A central theme in northern felid climate research is that the dividing line between Canada lynx and bobcat tracks snow conditions. This overview surveys the morphological and ecological basis for tha…