🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Smith and colleagues, working with the Santa Cruz Puma Project, used playback experiments at puma kill sites, broadcasting human voices versus a control of frog calls, while monitoring the cats' behav…

Justine A. Smith, Justin P. Suraci, Michael Clinchy, Ayana Crawford, Devin Roberts, Liana Y. Zanette, Christopher C. Wilmers · Proceedings of the Royal Society B · 2017

Foster and colleagues compared the diets of jaguars and pumas in Belize using scat analysis along a gradient of human disturbance. They found the two big cats partition prey to some degree, with jagua…

Foster, R.J., Harmsen, B.J., Valkenburgh, B., Doncaster, C.P. · Journal of Zoology · 2010

Using genetic samples from pumas across southern California, this study revealed that freeways and urban development had carved the regional population into fragments with reduced gene flow and signs…

Ernest HB, Vickers TW, Morrison SA, Buchalski MR, Boyce WM · PLoS ONE · 2014

This study evaluated the landmark 1995 intervention in which eight female Texas pumas were released into Florida to counteract the inbreeding crisis of the endangered Florida panther. Tracking the pop…

Warren E. Johnson, David P. Onorato, Stephen J. O'Brien, et al. · Science · 2010

This study used mitochondrial DNA and microsatellites across the puma's vast range from Canada to Patagonia to reconstruct the species' population history. The authors found surprisingly low genetic d…

Melanie Culver, Warren E. Johnson, Jill Pecon-Slattery, Stephen J. O'Brien · Journal of Heredity · 2000

This study used molecular markers to assess genetic variation across the puma's enormous range from Canada to Patagonia and found surprisingly low diversity in North America. The authors concluded tha…

Culver M, Johnson WE, Pecon-Slattery J, O'Brien SJ · Journal of Heredity · 2000

This study sequenced the cheetah genome and documented its extreme genetic uniformity, a legacy of severe historical bottlenecks. The authors found very low genome-wide diversity, including in immune-…

Dobrynin P, Liu S, Tamazian G, et al. · Genome Biology · 2015

Inskip and Zimmermann produced a comprehensive global review of conflict between people and wild cats, synthesising the geography, drivers, and severity of conflict across all felid species. They iden…

Chloe Inskip, Alexandra Zimmermann · Oryx · 2009

Riley and colleagues used GPS telemetry and genetics to show that the small puma population in the Santa Monica Mountains was severely isolated by surrounding freeways, with the 101 in particular near…

Seth P. D. Riley, Laurel E. K. Serieys, John P. Pollinger, Jeffrey A. Sikich, Lisa Dalbeck, Robert K. Wayne, Holly B. Ernest · Current Biology · 2014

Williams and colleagues built custom SMART collars combining GPS, accelerometers, and physiological calibration to measure, for the first time, the moment-to-moment energy expenditure of wild pumas as…

Terrie M. Williams, Lisa Wolfe, Tracy Davis, Traci Kendall, Beau Richter, Yiwei Wang, Caleb Bryce, G. Hugh Elkaim, Christopher C. Wilmers · Science · 2014

Palomares and Caro compiled and analyzed the global record of carnivores killing other carnivores, establishing intraguild predation as a widespread structuring force. They showed that interspecific k…

Palomares, F. & Caro, T.M. · The American Naturalist · 1999

Ripple and Beschta documented a striking felid-driven trophic cascade by contrasting heavily visited Zion Canyon, where human presence depressed cougars, with a nearby low-visitation canyon where coug…

Ripple, W.J. & Beschta, R.L. · Biological Conservation · 2006

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

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 study sequenced complete genomes of pumas from across the Americas to examine how range-wide demographic history shaped genetic load and diversity. The authors confirmed the deep divergence betwe…

Nedda F. Saremi, Beth Shapiro, et al. · Nature Communications · 2019

Elbroch and colleagues documented how pumas function as ecosystem engineers by provisioning rich, dependable carrion. Monitoring puma kills with cameras, they recorded a large diversity of vertebrate…

Elbroch, L.M. et al. · Biological Conservation · 2017

This study examined how a guild of mammalian carnivores responds to habitat fragmentation in southern California, finding that species differ markedly in their sensitivity to isolation and patch size,…

Crooks, K.R. · Conservation Biology · 2002

During COVID-19 lockdowns, reports emerged worldwide of wildlife, including pumas, venturing into emptied urban areas, and this overview examines what such incursions suggest about felid responses to…

Lentiviruses related to domestic-cat FIV circulate widely in wild felid species including lions, pumas, leopards, and others, often at high seroprevalence yet apparently with limited disease in their…

High-resolution GPS tracking combined with accelerometers and other biologgers has transformed the study of how felids behave near people, enabling fine-scale analysis of movement, activity, energetic…

This overview synthesizes a body of GPS-telemetry research that transformed understanding of puma ecology by intensively visiting location clusters to study predation, competition, and social behavior…

An overview of how the advent of GPS telemetry transformed estimation of kill rates for solitary cats such as pumas, leopards and lynx. The approach identifies spatial clusters of frequent locations,…

The extinct American cheetah of the genus Miracinonyx superficially resembled the living cheetah, with adaptations for fast pursuit of swift prey such as the pronghorn. This overview surveys genetic a…

P-22 was a male puma collared by the National Park Service after he made an improbable journey across two of Los Angeles's busiest freeways, the 405 and the 101, to settle in tiny Griffith Park beside…

P-22 became the most famous urban mountain lion in the world after crossing two of the busiest freeways in the United States to settle in Griffith Park, a small island of habitat surrounded by central…

Following the Bronx Zoo tigers, SARS-CoV-2 infections were confirmed in big cats at zoos and sanctuaries across multiple countries, including additional tigers, lions, snow leopards, pumas and others.…

This overview describes the integrated collar architecture that combined GPS with an inertial measurement unit of accelerometers and magnetometers to study puma movement and energetics at fine resolut…

Serosurveys consistently reveal high Toxoplasma exposure in wild felids, reflecting their role as both definitive hosts and predators of infected prey. This overview synthesizes prevalence patterns ac…

Even in the GPS era, VHF remains indispensable for one task: signaling death. This overview describes mortality-mode beacons that change pulse rate when a collar stops moving for a set interval, alert…

Sylvatic plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, circulates among rodents in the American West, and mountain lions become exposed by preying on infected rodents and lagomorphs. This overview…