🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Snow cover shapes how snow leopards stalk prey, move across terrain, and den, so shifts in the timing, depth, and persistence of snow under warming can alter their ecology. This overview surveys how r…

Climate change poses a distinctive threat to snow leopards by altering the high-mountain habitats they depend on. This overview synthesizes research projecting how warming may push the treeline and fo…

Snow leopards inhabit cold, high-elevation environments that are projected to shrink as climate warming pushes the treeline upward and alters alpine ecosystems. This overview surveys research modellin…

Climate change poses varied threats to the world's cats, and assessing which species and populations are most vulnerable is increasingly important for prioritization. This overview surveys research on…

Snow leopard persistence is tightly coupled to wild ungulate prey such as blue sheep (bharal), Himalayan ibex, and argali, whose forage and distribution shift with warming. This overview surveys how a…

Climate refugia, places relatively buffered from climate change where species can persist, are an increasingly central organizing idea in conservation planning. This overview surveys the typology of r…

Snow leopards occupy cold, high-elevation habitat that climate change threatens to shrink and fragment, and this overview examines how movement and distribution research informs projections of their f…

Some cats endure cold climates, and this overview reviews how they tolerate low temperatures. Cold-climate cats rely on dense, insulating fur, including seasonal thickening, on conserving core heat th…

Snow leopards inhabit vast, rugged ranges where direct contact is rare, making indirect communication essential. This overview surveys research on snow leopard signalling, including scrape marks, scen…

Because snow leopards live among pastoralist communities across remote mountains, community-based programs are central to their conservation. This overview surveys research on initiatives that align l…

This overview reviews community-managed livestock insurance schemes for snow leopard depredation in the mountains of northern Pakistan, where herders contribute premiums to village funds that compensa…

This overview examines community-run insurance schemes in which herders pay premiums into a locally managed fund that pays out for verified predator kills, an alternative to state or NGO compensation.…

This overview synthesises comparative studies that contrast successful and unsuccessful big-cat coexistence efforts to distil transferable lessons. It reviews analyses spanning lion, snow leopard, tig…

The sequencing of cat genomes, beginning with the domestic cat and extending to tiger, lion, snow leopard, cheetah, and others, transformed felid systematics. This overview surveys how whole-genome da…

Felid species differ in their vocal repertoires, and comparative bioacoustics has sought to map these differences onto phylogeny and ecology. This overview surveys work cataloguing call types across s…

Compensation and insurance schemes aim to offset the costs that big cats impose on livestock owners, reducing the incentive for retaliatory killing. This overview surveys research evaluating these fin…

As climate change shifts the distribution of suitable habitat, connectivity must allow species to track those changes by moving to newly suitable areas, adding a dynamic dimension to corridor planning…

As climate change shifts the distribution of suitable habitat, corridors that connect populations today may not align with where animals need to move tomorrow, and this overview examines how researche…

This overview reviews performance-payment models that reward communities for conservation outcomes, such as the documented presence of breeding snow leopards or the absence of retaliatory killing, rat…

The most realistic forecasts of cat futures combine climate change with land-use change, since for many forest cats habitat conversion is the faster, larger threat. This overview surveys how integrate…

This overview synthesises the theory and practice of compensating farmers for livestock killed by big cats as a tolerance-building tool. It reviews recurring design challenges: verifying claims to pre…

A core prediction of climate change is that mountain species will shift upslope, and detecting such shifts in elusive cats is a methodological challenge. This overview surveys the evidence and approac…

Comparative and population genomics allow researchers to find genes shaped by natural selection in cats, revealing the molecular basis of their predatory adaptations. This overview surveys the methods…

Snow leopards inhabit remote high mountains, yet they are not isolated from disease, facing exposure to pathogens shared with domestic animals and prey across their range. This overview surveys what i…

This overview synthesises the widely replicated finding that proximity to forest or natural cover strongly predicts big-cat depredation on livestock, with attacks declining as distance from the forest…

A survey of the factors that lead snow leopards to kill domestic livestock, the principal source of conflict that drives retaliatory killing of this endangered cat. Depredation rises where wild prey s…

Detecting climate-driven range shifts in snow leopards requires repeated, standardized occupancy surveys across elevation gradients. This overview surveys how camera-trap arrays and occupancy modeling…

In the mountains of Asia, common leopards, snow leopards, and tigers can occur along elevational gradients, partitioning the landscape by altitude and habitat. This overview synthesizes research on ho…

Vocal abilities are distributed across the felid family tree in informative ways, and this overview reviews the evolution of cat vocal anatomy. Mapping hyoid structure and laryngeal features onto feli…

Forensic science has become a powerful tool against the illegal trade in big cat parts, allowing seized skins, bones, and other products to be identified to species, and sometimes to population or ind…