🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

This landmark study produced the first globally consistent, high-resolution maps of forest loss and gain in the 21st century using satellite imagery, quantifying deforestation at fine scale across the…

Hansen, M.C., Potapov, P.V., Moore, R., Hancher, M., Turubanova, S.A., Tyukavina, A., et al. · Science · 2013

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

Inskip and colleagues used household surveys across villages bordering the Bangladesh Sundarbans to document the full burden of human-tiger conflict, encompassing fatal and nonfatal attacks on people,…

Chloe Inskip, et al. · Human Ecology · 2013

Goodrich reviewed the global state of human-tiger conflict, spanning attacks on people, livestock depredation, and the killing of tigers in retaliation or fear across the species' range. The review sy…

John M. Goodrich · Integrative Zoology · 2010

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

This large-scale study assessed Sumatran tiger occupancy across the island, linking tiger presence to forest cover, elevation, and protection status. By compiling extensive survey data, the authors ma…

Wibisono, H.T., Linkie, M., Guillera-Arroita, G., Smith, J.A., Sunarto, S., Pusparini, W., et al. · PLoS ONE · 2011

This study extracted DNA from museum specimens of the extinct Caspian tiger and compared it with living subspecies, revealing that the Caspian and Amur tigers were extremely close genetically, essenti…

Driscoll CA, Yamaguchi N, Bar-Gal GK, et al. · PLoS ONE · 2009

This study used genetic data to investigate the small spotted cats of South America and uncovered a cryptic species hidden within what was called the oncilla or tigrina. The authors found that northea…

Trigo TC, Schneider A, de Oliveira TG, et al. · Current Biology · 2013

An early molecular study of the big cats that used mitochondrial 12S rRNA and cytochrome b sequences to probe relationships within the Panthera group. This work was among the first to apply DNA sequen…

Janczewski DN, Modi WS, Stephens JC, O'Brien SJ · Molecular Biology and Evolution · 1995

Karanth and colleagues applied occupancy modeling to landscape-scale tiger monitoring, using sign and detection surveys across large areas where camera-based density estimation everywhere would be imp…

K. Ullas Karanth, Arjun M. Gopalaswamy, N. Samba Kumar, Srinivas Vaidyanathan, James D. Nichols, Darryl I. MacKenzie · Journal of Applied Ecology · 2011

This study described Panthera zdanskyi, an exceptionally complete fossil cat skull from northwestern China that illuminates the early evolution of the tiger lineage. Dated to the Pliocene, the specime…

Ji H. Mazak, Per Christiansen, Andrew C. Kitchener · PLoS ONE · 2011

This genetic study sampled tigers across their range to clarify how many distinct lineages exist and how they are distributed. By analyzing molecular markers, the authors described population structur…

Luo SJ, Kim JH, Johnson WE, et al. · PLoS Biology · 2004

This study sampled tigers from across their range and used mitochondrial and microsatellite markers to test whether the traditional subspecies are genetically distinct. The authors found support for s…

Shu-Jin Luo, Stephen J. O'Brien, et al. · PLoS Biology · 2004

This study analyzed mitochondrial and microsatellite markers from tigers across their range and provided the first comprehensive molecular framework supporting multiple traditional subspecies. The aut…

Luo SJ, Kim JH, Johnson WE, et al. · PLoS Biology · 2004

This study argued that tigers are best treated as just two subspecies, a continental form and a Sunda-island form, rather than the traditional six or nine. Reanalyzing morphological, ecological, molec…

Wilting A, Courtiol A, Christiansen P, et al. · Science Advances · 2015

Vaz, Narayan and colleagues surveyed tigers and leopards across multiple Indian zoos, combining behavioural observation of pacing with non-invasive faecal cortisol measurement. They found substantial…

Vaz J, Narayan EJ, Dileep Kumar R, Thenmozhi K, Thiyagesan K, Baskaran N · PLoS ONE · 2017

Extending the prey-preference framework to Asia's largest cat, Hayward and colleagues compiled tiger kill records across the species' range and weighted them against prey availability. Tigers showed a…

Hayward, M.W., Jedrzejewski, W. & Jedrzejewska, B. · Journal of Zoology · 2012

A landmark study of intraguild prey partitioning in India's Nagarahole reserve, combining prey censuses with predator kill records to test how three sympatric large carnivores divide a shared ungulate…

Karanth, K.U. & Sunquist, M.E. · Journal of Animal Ecology · 1995

Gopalaswamy and colleagues released SPACECAP, free software implementing Bayesian spatially explicit capture-recapture specifically to make modern density estimation accessible to camera-trap practiti…

Arjun M. Gopalaswamy, J. Andrew Royle, James E. Hines, Pallavi Singh, Devcharan Jathanna, et al. · Methods in Ecology and Evolution · 2012

Amur leopards rely chiefly on roe deer, sika deer, and other ungulates whose abundance, depressed by poaching and habitat degradation, limits leopard recovery in the cold forests of the Russian Far Ea…

This overview reviews human-tiger conflict involving Amur (Siberian) tigers in the Russian Far East and northeast China, a low-density, cold-forest population. It synthesises studies of livestock and…

The Amur tiger of the Russian Far East and northeast China recovered from near-extinction in the mid-twentieth century to a stable population spread across vast temperate forests. This overview survey…

This overview synthesizes telemetry research on Amur, or Siberian, tigers in the Russian Far East, where GPS collars have revealed enormous home ranges, long movements through snow-bound boreal forest…

The Amur tiger inhabits the temperate and boreal forests of the Russian Far East and northeast China, a very different climate context from tropical tiger populations. This overview surveys how climat…

Amur tigers inhabit the cold temperate forests of the Russian Far East, where low prey density forces them to range over enormous areas. This overview reviews radio-telemetry and GPS studies showing t…

This overview synthesizes decades of telemetry on Amur tigers in the temperate forests of the Russian Far East, where long-term collaring programs have revealed enormous home ranges, seasonal movement…

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, CITES, governs cross-border trade in wildlife, and the world's big cats are listed on its Appendix I, banning commercial international trad…

The Global Snow Leopard and Ecosystem Protection Program, GSLEP, is an intergovernmental initiative uniting the twelve snow leopard range countries around a shared conservation agenda, including a goa…

This overview examines the science and management history of India's Project Tiger, launched in 1973, and the expanding network of tiger reserves it created. Researchers have studied how core-buffer z…

India conducts one of the world's largest wildlife monitoring exercises, a periodic national tiger assessment that combines landscape-scale occupancy surveys with intensive camera trapping to estimate…