🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

The IUCN Red List provides the standard framework for assessing the extinction risk of the world's cats, guiding conservation priorities and tracking changes in status over time. This overview surveys…

Feline leukemia virus is fundamentally a domestic-cat pathogen, yet it has crossed into endangered wild felids with lethal consequences. This overview surveys documented and suspected spillover events…

Small populations accumulate deleterious mutations, the genetic load, but sustained inbreeding can also expose and remove the most harmful recessive variants through a process called purging. This ove…

Having passed through a severe bottleneck, the Iberian lynx carries reduced genetic diversity, which compounds its vulnerability to climate and disease stress. This overview surveys how genetic monito…

Genomic erosion refers to the cumulative loss of genetic diversity and accumulation of harmful variation that accompanies population decline, and cats provide some of its clearest examples. This overv…

When feline leukemia virus appears in an endangered wild felid, tracing its origin is crucial for management. This overview surveys how molecular phylogenetics is used to attribute wild FeLV infection…

The Iberian lynx became the world's most endangered cat, falling to fewer than one hundred individuals before an intensive recovery effort. This overview surveys genomic studies revealing that the spe…

Effective conservation increasingly requires integrating disease information alongside genetic, demographic and habitat data in planning for felids. This overview surveys how disease data are incorpor…

After a virulent feline leukemia virus outbreak struck Donana Iberian lynx, disease management became central to recovery of the species. This overview synthesizes the response and ongoing strategy: r…

Iberian lynx recovery has relied on metapopulation thinking, managing a set of connected subpopulations to spread risk and sustain gene flow. This overview surveys how population viability analyses in…

Tracking whether Iberian lynx recovery is keeping pace with environmental change requires sustained, standardized monitoring of cats, rabbits, and habitat. This overview surveys the census methods, ca…

The concept of pathogen pollution describes the human-mediated introduction of pathogens into new host populations, a recurring driver of disease in wild felids. This overview surveys how activities s…

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…

Population viability analysis estimates extinction risk by simulating a population's demography forward in time, and it is increasingly run under climate scenarios for threatened cats. This overview s…

How flexibly a cat can switch prey when its preferred species declines shapes its resilience to drought and habitat change. This overview surveys evidence on dietary breadth across felids, from specia…

Feline leukemia virus infections range from progressive, with persistent viremia and high mortality, to regressive, where the host contains the virus and may clear detectable antigen. This overview su…

The Iberian lynx is a rabbit specialist, and the collapse of European rabbit populations from the viral diseases myxomatosis and rabbit hemorrhagic disease was a central driver of the lynx's near-exti…

The Iberian lynx is a hyperspecialist on European rabbit, so rabbit population crashes from rabbit hemorrhagic disease (RHDV, including the RHDV2 variant) and myxomatosis directly threaten the cat. Th…

Releasing captive-bred cats into the wild aims to restore or reinforce populations but requires that animals possess the skills and health to survive and reproduce. This overview surveys reintroductio…

As Iberian lynx populations expanded into landscapes crossed by roads, vehicle collisions became a leading cause of death, threatening to offset gains from breeding and reintroduction. This overview s…

Vehicle collisions are a leading cause of Iberian lynx death and a major barrier to the connectivity that climate-adaptive recovery depends on. This overview surveys how road networks fragment lynx ha…

Whole-genome sequencing reveals long stretches where an individual inherited identical segments from both parents, called runs of homozygosity, which accumulate with inbreeding and small population si…

Reflecting its recovery, the Iberian lynx was downlisted on the IUCN Red List from Critically Endangered to Endangered, and later assessments recognized further improvement as populations and range co…

The Iberian lynx, Lynx pardinus, is a critically endangered Mediterranean felid recognized as a full species distinct from the Eurasian lynx. This overview reviews the evidence for its species status,…

A coordinated captive breeding program was a cornerstone of Iberian lynx recovery, producing animals for reintroduction while safeguarding genetic diversity. This overview surveys research underpinnin…

The Iberian lynx captive breeding program is widely cited as a conservation success that helped reverse the species' decline toward extinction. This overview surveys the program's establishment, its g…

The Iberian lynx genome, among the first sequenced for an endangered cat, revealed the genomic consequences of its extreme population decline. This overview surveys how genomic studies documented exce…

The Iberian lynx, once the world's most endangered cat, fell to roughly a hundred animals in two isolated Spanish populations early this century before an intensive, sustained recovery effort reversed…

The lynx lineage comprises four species: the Eurasian lynx, the Iberian lynx, the Canada lynx, and the bobcat. This overview surveys their relationships and biogeography, explaining how molecular phyl…

This synthesis reviews the conservation standing of the lynxes as a group, which spans nearly the full range of extinction risk. The bobcat and Eurasian lynx are broadly secure, the latter recovering…