🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Effective anti-poaching increasingly depends on cooperation from local communities, including informant networks that provide intelligence on poaching and trafficking. This overview surveys research o…

Community-based natural resource management, CBNRM, devolves authority over wildlife and habitat to local communities on the premise that local stewardship, backed by tangible benefits, conserves bett…

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…

Complete mitochondrial genomes have been sequenced for most cat species, providing a standardized dataset for phylogenetics, phylogeography, and species identification. This overview surveys the assem…

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…

The fishing cat is a wetland specialist of South and Southeast Asia, increasingly threatened by the loss and fragmentation of marshes and mangroves. This overview surveys the limited but growing genet…

With far more conservation need than funding, the controversial idea of conservation triage proposes deciding where to invest based on cost, feasibility, and likely return, potentially accepting that…

Across the cat family, similar coat phenotypes such as melanism, pale or white morphs, and spotted-to-striped pattern shifts have arisen repeatedly in different lineages. This overview surveys the evi…

With limited resources, conservationists must decide which corridors to protect first, and whether continuous corridors or chains of habitat stepping stones best serve wide-ranging cats. This overview…

As awareness of light pollution grows, planners increasingly consider wildlife-sensitive lighting and the preservation of dark corridors to maintain connectivity for nocturnal animals. This overview s…

Conservation managers must decide which populations to treat as separate units for protection, breeding, and translocation, and genetics provides the primary evidence. This overview surveys the concep…

Because enforcement alone struggles to stop trade driven by persistent consumer demand, conservationists increasingly invest in demand-reduction interventions aimed at changing the behavior of people…

Reliable anthropogenic food can boost carnivore survival and reproduction, producing higher densities and altered population dynamics in subsidised urban environments. This overview synthesises resear…

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…

Effective population size, the number of individuals genetically contributing to the next generation, is often far smaller than the census count and is a key predictor of how quickly a population lose…

Environmental DNA, the genetic material that animals shed into their surroundings, offers a powerful new way to detect elusive cats without observing them directly. This overview surveys how environme…

The IUCN Red List provides the standard framework for assessing the extinction risk of the world's cats, guiding conservation priorities and tracking changes in status over time. This overview surveys…

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…

The genetic composition of founders and the rigor of post-release monitoring are central to reintroduction success, and this overview surveys research on both. Studies show that too few founders, or f…

Conservation science distinguishes structural connectivity, the physical continuity of habitat, from functional connectivity, whether animals actually move through it. This overview surveys research o…

Genetic data provide a direct way to measure whether animals are successfully moving and breeding between populations, making gene flow a key metric of functional connectivity. This overview surveys h…

Small populations accumulate deleterious mutations, the genetic load, but sustained inbreeding can also expose and remove the most harmful recessive variants through a process called purging. This ove…

Wildlife corridors aim to reconnect fragmented cat populations, and genetics provides a direct test of whether they actually restore gene flow. This overview surveys how landscape and population genet…

Genetic rescue refers to deliberately introducing individuals from another population to boost the fitness of a small, inbred population through new genetic variation. This overview surveys the concep…

In many cats, one sex disperses farther than the other, with males typically moving while females remain near their natal range, a pattern that leaves distinct genetic footprints. This overview survey…

The sand cat is a small felid of the deserts of North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia, with adaptations for life in extreme arid heat. This overview surveys its placement within the Felis li…

Pallas's cat, or the manul, is a small, densely furred cat of the Central Asian steppe whose phylogenetic placement was clarified by molecular data linking it to the leopard cat lineage. This overview…

The end of the Pleistocene saw the loss of many large cats, including sabertooths, cave lions, American lions, and the American cheetah, as part of the broader megafaunal extinction. This overview sur…

Beyond genes, the architecture of felid genomes, including repetitive elements, transposons, and structural variants, shapes evolution and complicates assembly. This overview surveys the composition o…

Genomic erosion refers to the cumulative loss of genetic diversity and accumulation of harmful variation that accompanies population decline, and cats provide some of its clearest examples. This overv…