🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

High-throughput sequencing has opened a new era of virus discovery, allowing researchers to catalog the viromes of wild felids without prior knowledge of which pathogens to seek. This overview surveys…

Molecular tools have revolutionized the study of how pathogens spread among carnivores, including felids, by reading the genetic signatures of viruses and parasites. This overview surveys the use of m…

Determining the sex of individuals from non-invasively collected samples such as feces or hair supports studies of population structure, dispersal, and reproduction. This overview surveys molecular se…

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,…

Effective population size, the genetically relevant number of breeders, is a key indicator of a fragmented population's resilience. This overview surveys how researchers estimate it for cats from noni…

Natal dispersal, the movement of young animals from their birth area to where they will breed, varies in distance and sex bias across cat species. This overview compiles comparative data on dispersal…

Careful necropsy and pathological examination underpin much of what is known about causes of death and disease in wild felids. This overview surveys the role of standardized post-mortem investigation…

Net squared displacement, the squared straight-line distance from a starting point over time, provides a simple but powerful way to classify whole-trajectory movement strategies. This overview describ…

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…

A survey of how cats influence prey populations through fear and disturbance rather than direct killing. Risk effects include reduced foraging, heightened vigilance, altered habitat use, physiological…

An overview of how the prey a cat takes changes as it grows, learns to hunt and gains the size and strength to subdue larger prey. Young felids first depend on prey provided by their mother, then prac…

Population viability analysis integrates demography, genetics and connectivity to project the persistence of small felid populations isolated by urbanisation, guiding conservation triage and intervent…

A survey of how felids exploit the seasonal pulse of newborn ungulates, a period of high vulnerability that can dominate annual recruitment losses. During calving and fawning seasons, abundant, hidden…

An overview of the behavioral defenses ungulates and other prey deploy against felid predators, from vigilance scanning to alarm signaling and habitat avoidance. Because cats are stealthy ambush hunte…

A felid’s diet largely determines its parasite burden, as many worms and protozoa are acquired by eating infected prey. This overview surveys how prey-mediated transmission shapes the parasitic fauna…

Vaccines against feline immunodeficiency virus exist for domestic cats but raise complex questions when considered for wild felids harboring their own endemic lentiviruses. This overview surveys the i…

Outdoor recreation brings people deep into wildlife habitat, and this overview examines how hiking, biking, and trail use affect puma movement and space use. Telemetry studies show that pumas often av…

Rivers, streams, and the vegetated strips along them often serve as natural movement corridors for cats, offering cover, water, prey, and continuous habitat threading through otherwise open or develop…

During his time in Griffith Park, the Los Angeles puma P-22 developed notoedric mange and was found to have been exposed to anticoagulant rodenticides, mirroring a pattern documented in regional bobca…

An overview of how much carrion features in the diets of cats traditionally viewed as pure hunters. While felids are generally more reliant on fresh kills than canids or hyaenids, many will scavenge o…

An overview of how the prey cats select shifts through the year with prey vulnerability, migration, birth pulses and weather. Many felids exploit seasonal ungulate calving and fawning peaks, when abun…

An overview of the long-debated tendency of cats to kill the young, old, sick and injured disproportionately, and what it implies for predation impact. If predators chiefly remove individuals with low…

Interpreting antibody tests in wild felids is complicated by cross-reactivity, where antibodies to one pathogen react with tests for a related agent, blurring diagnoses. This overview surveys the diag…

Serological surveys, which detect antibodies as evidence of past or present infection, are a workhorse of wildlife disease epidemiology. This overview surveys how serosurveys reveal pathogen exposure…

The effectiveness of wildlife crossings depends partly on shielding animals from the light and noise of adjacent traffic, factors that can deter wary felids from using overpasses and underpasses. This…

An overview comparing the hunting effectiveness of solitary felids with the cooperative hunting of lions, addressing why most cats hunt alone. Solitary ambush hunting suits stalking predators that tar…

An overview of how ambush felids select hunting habitat to minimize the distance over which they must close on prey undetected. Because capture success drops sharply with the length of the final rush,…

An overview of documented cases in which cats kill more prey than they can eat, extending Kruuk's classic analysis to felids. Surplus killing in cats typically occurs when normal prey escape responses…

Beyond domestic cats, wild felids such as bobcats and pumas sustain natural sylvatic cycles of Toxoplasma, shedding oocysts that infect wild prey and contribute to environmental contamination. This ov…

The wildlife crossings along the Trans-Canada Highway through Banff National Park constitute one of the longest-running, most comprehensively monitored road-mitigation programs in the world, and this…