🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Cats are hosts to feline immunodeficiency virus, feline leukemia virus, and other pathogens whose long association has left marks on both host and viral genomes. This overview surveys how these viruse…

Successful coexistence with urban felids depends as much on human attitudes, institutions and behaviour as on animal ecology. This overview synthesises social-science research on tolerance, risk perce…

Small or isolated cat populations frequently show the hallmarks of inbreeding depression, including reduced fertility, abnormal sperm, congenital defects, weakened immunity, and elevated juvenile mort…

Because modern cats radiated rapidly, different genes often disagree about the branching order of species, a phenomenon known as incomplete lineage sorting that arises when ancestral polymorphisms per…

Consistent individual differences in boldness, exploration and risk tolerance, often termed animal personality, may determine which individuals successfully colonise and persist in urban environments.…

Direct provisioning, whether intentional feeding of wildlife or unintentional access to pet food, livestock and garbage, can habituate felids to people and escalate conflict. This overview synthesises…

Cats are famously indifferent to sweetness, and genetics revealed why: they carry a pseudogenized sweet-taste receptor gene that no longer produces a functional receptor. This overview surveys the dis…

The major histocompatibility complex encodes immune-recognition molecules whose diversity is crucial for resisting pathogens, and its depletion is a key concern in inbred cat populations. This overvie…

Securing the attractants that draw felids toward people, including garbage, pet food, accessible livestock and the rodent and dog populations these support, is a frontline coexistence measure. This ov…

Natural history museum collections preserve specimens spanning centuries, providing a genetic archive of felid populations as they existed before recent declines. This overview surveys how museum geno…

The rate at which new mutations arise sets the pace of evolution and the recovery of diversity in small populations, yet it has been difficult to measure directly in cats. This overview surveys effort…

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…

Chronic exposure to anthropogenic noise can elevate stress hormones and impair health and reproduction in wildlife, a pathway potentially affecting urban-edge carnivores. This overview synthesises phy…

Protecting livestock and poultry from felid predation through non-lethal means is central to reducing conflict and retaliatory killing at the urban and agricultural edge. This overview synthesises res…

Because most wild cats are elusive and difficult to capture, conservation geneticists increasingly rely on noninvasive samples such as scat, hair, and shed cells to obtain DNA without handling the ani…

Zoos and breeding programs maintain studbooks to manage the genetics of captive cat populations, aiming to retain diversity and avoid inbreeding across generations. This overview surveys how pedigree…

This overview synthesizes the deep-time evolution of cats, from the Oligocene Proailurus and Miocene Pseudaelurus stem felids through the divergence of the conical-toothed Felinae and the sabertoothed…

Population viability analysis, PVA, uses demographic and genetic models to estimate the probability that a population will persist over a given time, helping conservationists assess risk and compare m…

Artificial light alters the behaviour, abundance and detectability of the rodents, birds and insects that felids hunt, indirectly affecting predators through the prey base. This overview synthesises r…

The effectiveness of wildlife crossings depends partly on shielding animals from the light and noise of adjacent traffic, factors that can deter wary felids from using overpasses and underpasses. This…

Wire snares are among the most pervasive and indiscriminate threats to big cats, killing or maiming tigers, leopards, lions, and other predators directly and decimating the prey populations they depen…

The deep origins of the cat family trace to small civet-like carnivores of the Oligocene and Miocene, notably Proailurus and the later Pseudaelurus, from which both the modern cats and the sabertooths…

The landscape-of-fear concept holds that perceived predation risk, including risk from humans acting as super-predators, reshapes where and how animals move, feed and rest. This overview synthesises e…

Cities create urban heat islands and altered microclimates that can impose thermal stress on felids, influencing their use of shade, water and cool refuges, especially as climate warming intensifies.…

When anthropogenic food subsidises predators, the effects ripple through food webs, altering predation pressure on native prey and interactions among carnivores. This overview synthesises research on…

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…

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 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 landmark global meta-analysis showed that mammals across the world, including many carnivores, increase their nocturnal activity in response to human disturbance, becoming more active at night ev…

Gaynor KM, Hojnowski CE, Carter NH, Brashares JS · Science · 2018

This edited volume assembled the foundational synthesis of urban carnivore biology, bringing together chapters on species from coyotes and foxes to felids, and on cross-cutting themes of disease, conf…

Gehrt SD, Riley SPD, Cypher BL · Johns Hopkins University Press · 2010