🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Bobcats in fire-prone chaparral and shrubland of the western United States face landscapes shaped by both wildfire and urban development. This overview surveys how bobcats respond to fire through move…

Bobcats increasingly occupy urban and suburban environments, and this overview reviews research on these populations. GPS-tracking studies in metropolitan areas document bobcats using remnant natural…

Modern tracking technologies have transformed how disease is studied in elusive wild cats. This overview surveys the use of camera traps and GPS telemetry to investigate felid disease ecology, from de…

Cities support large populations of commensal rodents fed by human waste, and these rodents form a critical prey subsidy for small and medium urban felids from bobcats to leopard cats and jungle cats.…

This overview compares the four lynx species, the Eurasian, Canada, Iberian, and the bobcat, highlighting how a shared body plan has diversified across habitats and prey. All share short tails, ear tu…

Wildlife crossings are often designed with large mammals in mind, but smaller felids such as bobcats have distinct preferences, and this overview examines how they use such structures. Monitoring show…

Felids living at the edges of cities, such as bobcats and mountain lions in California, face a distinctive disease landscape shaped by human activity. This overview surveys the disease ecology of urba…

The Canada lynx and bobcat are North American members of the lynx lineage whose relationships and occasional hybridization illuminate felid speciation. This overview examines their divergence, with mo…

Domestic cats occupy the urban carnivore community alongside native mesopredators and larger carnivores, and their abundance is shaped by interactions with these species. This overview synthesises res…

Habitat edges created by urban development alter microclimate, vegetation, prey, disturbance and predator interactions, shaping how felids use the boundary between natural and built land. This overvie…

Tick-borne diseases are emerging and shifting in wild felids as tick distributions change and molecular tools reveal new pathogens. This overview surveys the changing landscape of tick-borne disease i…

Cats, both domestic and wild, are the only definitive hosts in which Toxoplasma gondii completes sexual reproduction and sheds environmentally resistant oocysts. This overview surveys the ecology of t…

Beyond bovine tuberculosis, felids can be affected by other mycobacteria, including the agents of feline leprosy that cause nodular skin disease. This overview surveys what is known about these atypic…

The wildland-urban interface, where development meets wildland vegetation, is expanding and is the zone where climate-driven fire most directly intersects with cat populations like urban-edge pumas an…

Studying how fire affects cats requires methods to map burns, track animal responses, and disentangle fire from other drivers. This overview surveys the toolkit, satellite burn-severity mapping, GPS t…

Climate change can alter fire regimes, frequency, intensity, seasonality, and extent, pushing ecosystems toward new states that differ from historical conditions. This overview surveys how shifting fi…

Fleas transmit a range of pathogens to felids, including Bartonella species responsible for cat-scratch disease, hemotropic mycoplasmas that cause anemia, and the plague bacterium. This overview surve…

The risk that domestic-cat pathogens reach wild felids and other wildlife scales with the density and distribution of free-roaming cats, especially near protected areas. This overview surveys research…

Documented first in southern California felids and later in Cape Town caracals, anticoagulant-rodenticide exposure in wild cats has emerged as a global phenomenon wherever predators hunt poisoned rode…

Wild cats host a diverse array of helminths, including roundworms such as Toxocara and Toxascaris, tapeworms like Spirometra and Taenia, hookworms and lungworms, acquired largely through their prey. T…

The discovery that a terrestrial cat parasite kills marine mammals reshaped understanding of how pathogens cross ecosystem boundaries. This overview synthesizes research on the flow of Toxoplasma oocy…

Landscape genetics, combining molecular markers with spatial models, has become essential for detecting how roads and development fragment felid populations and for prioritising connectivity. This ove…

The bobcat, a widespread and adaptable North American cat, has become a model for studying how roads, development, and habitat fragmentation shape gene flow in carnivores. This overview surveys geneti…

Beyond habitat loss, human landscapes emit pervasive light and noise, and this overview examines their effects on the movement and activity of cats. Artificial light at night can alter the cover-depen…

Demonstrating that a wildlife crossing works requires monitoring, and this overview surveys the methods used to document which animals use structures and how often. Remote cameras provide continuous,…

Where the ranges of the bobcat and the Canada lynx overlap along the southern edge of the lynx distribution, the two species occasionally hybridize, producing animals sometimes called blynx. This over…

Capturing and sampling wild felids is costly and risky, so researchers increasingly turn to non-invasive methods, especially analysis of feces, to detect pathogens and parasites. This overview surveys…

Notoedric mange, caused by Notoedres cati mites, has driven severe, sometimes locally devastating outbreaks in bobcats, particularly around urbanizing areas of California. This overview synthesizes th…

Periodic outbreaks of notoedric mange have caused steep, localised declines in urban and suburban bobcat populations, most prominently in southern California. This overview synthesises research connec…

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…