🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

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

Radloff and Du Toit analyzed the southern African large-carnivore guild to show that a predator's body mass sets both the average and the upper limit of the prey sizes it takes. Larger predators such…

Radloff, F.G.T. & Du Toit, J.T. · Journal of Animal Ecology · 2004

This study quantified an unexpected ecosystem service delivered by leopards inhabiting Sanjay Gandhi National Park inside greater Mumbai. By modelling leopard diet, in which feral and stray dogs form…

Braczkowski AR, OBryan CJ, Stringer MJ, Watson JEM, Possingham HP, Beyer HL · Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment · 2018

Braczkowski and colleagues modelled the ecological and public-health role of leopards inhabiting Sanjay Gandhi National Park within Mumbai, where the cats prey heavily on free-ranging dogs in surround…

Alexander R. Braczkowski, et al. · Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment · 2018

Ogada and colleagues conducted a controlled comparison of husbandry practices on Laikipia ranches in Kenya to identify which measures reduce predation by lions, leopards, hyenas, and cheetahs. By corr…

Maurice O. Ogada, Rosie Woodroffe, Nicholas O. Oguge, Laurence G. Frank · Conservation Biology · 2003

Kissui quantified livestock losses to lions, leopards, and spotted hyenas across Maasai households in northern Tanzania and linked those losses to retaliatory killing of carnivores. Using household su…

Bernard M. Kissui · Animal Conservation · 2008

Hill and Broom reviewed the conceptual and practical challenges of assessing welfare in zoo animals, applying Broom's coping-based definition to the captive context. They surveyed the range of indicat…

Hill SP, Broom DM · Zoo Biology · 2009

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

Building on their Nature note, Clubb and Mason developed a fuller comparative model of which natural traits predict poor captive welfare in carnivores. Across dozens of species they tested whether hom…

Clubb R, Mason GJ · Applied Animal Behaviour Science · 2007

Whitham and Wielebnowski argued that zoo welfare assessment should move beyond minimising negative states toward measuring and promoting positive welfare, and toward individual-level, continuous monit…

Whitham JC, Wielebnowski N · Applied Animal Behaviour Science · 2013

Mellor elaborated the Five Domains Model, which structures welfare assessment around four physical and functional domains, nutrition, environment, health and behaviour, that feed into a fifth, the ani…

Mellor DJ · Animals · 2017

Sinclair, Mduma and Brashares tested why some Serengeti ungulate species are regulated by predation while others are limited by food, using long-term data across the migratory and resident herbivore c…

Sinclair, A.R.E., Mduma, S. & Brashares, J.S. · Nature · 2003

Marker, Dickman, and Macdonald evaluated the Cheetah Conservation Fund's program placing Anatolian shepherd and Kangal guarding dogs with Namibian farmers to reduce cheetah and other predator losses.…

Laurie L. Marker, Amy J. Dickman, David W. Macdonald · Rangeland Ecology & Management · 2005

Mellen and MacPhee reflected on how environmental enrichment evolved from ad hoc novelty provision toward a goal-directed, integrated husbandry process. They proposed a framework in which enrichment i…

Mellen J, MacPhee MS · Zoo Biology · 2001

This study provided the first range-wide molecular assessment of the leopard, using mitochondrial and microsatellite data to evaluate the many subspecies that had been named on morphology. The authors…

Uphyrkina O, Johnson WE, Quigley H, et al. · Molecular Ecology · 2001

This morphological study reconstructed relationships among the pantherine cats while explicitly incorporating fossil taxa and testing how missing data affect tree inference. Working from cranial and s…

Christiansen P · Cladistics · 2008

Ritchie and Johnson reviewed the mechanisms by which top predators suppress mesopredators and the conditions under which that suppression breaks down. They emphasized that apex carnivores limit smalle…

Ritchie, E.G. & Johnson, C.N. · Ecology Letters · 2009

Owen-Smith and Mills assembled a detailed predation web for Kruger National Park, quantifying which predators kill which prey and in what proportions across the size spectrum. They mapped how lion, le…

Owen-Smith, N. & Mills, M.G.L. · Journal of Animal Ecology · 2008

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

This synthesis pulled together the individual prey-preference analyses for lion, leopard, cheetah, spotted hyena and wild dog to quantify dietary overlap across the African large-carnivore guild. By c…

Hayward, M.W. & Kerley, G.I.H. · South African Journal of Wildlife Research · 2008

This contribution to the Hayward prey-preference series quantified leopard diet selectivity across Africa and Asia using kill records weighted by prey abundance. Leopards showed a preferred prey weigh…

Hayward, M.W., Henschel, P., O'Brien, J., Hofmeyr, M., Balme, G. & Kerley, G.I.H. · Journal of Zoology · 2006

Though not a felid, the spotted hyena is the dominant competitor and kleptoparasite of African big cats, so its prey preferences are central to felid dynamics. Hayward compiled kill and diet records a…

Hayward, M.W. · Journal of Zoology · 2006

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

Leopards are among the most adaptable big cats, persisting from deserts to forests to the edges of cities, and this overview synthesizes telemetry research on their ranging across African landscapes.…

An overview of how molecular analysis of prey DNA in faeces is transforming the study of cat diets. By sequencing prey genetic material recovered from scats, researchers can identify prey to species w…

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…

This overview reviews the development of geographic information system (GIS) databases and surveillance systems that systematically record big-cat conflict incidents for analysis and management. It sy…

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…

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,…

This overview synthesises the international guidance developed under the IUCN's human-wildlife conflict and coexistence efforts, which distil principles and good practice for managing conflict involvi…