🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

At the northern edge of its range in Mexico and the southwestern United States, the jaguar occupies arid borderlands where climate, water availability, and human infrastructure shape persistence. This…

This overview examines the plight of jaguars in Brazil's highly fragmented Atlantic Forest, where tiny, isolated populations face acute conflict pressure. It synthesises studies of depredation on live…

An overview of the jaguar's distinctive predation on aquatic and semi-aquatic prey, especially caiman and capybara in wetland systems like the Pantanal and Llanos. The jaguar's powerful bite, capable…

Understanding how jaguars use human-modified landscapes is key to predicting their response to land-use and climate change. This overview surveys GPS-telemetry and resource-selection research showing…

Where jaguars share land with cattle ranching, depredation drives conflict that threatens the cat through retaliatory killing. This overview synthesizes studies on the patterns and drivers of jaguar p…

This overview reviews market-based incentives that reward ranchers for jaguar-compatible practices, including jaguar-friendly or wildlife-friendly beef certification and premium pricing. It synthesise…

A survey of how jaguars and pumas, the two large cats of the Neotropics, coexist across much of their shared range by partitioning prey, space and time. Jaguars generally take larger prey, including p…

This overview synthesises human-jaguar conflict across the species' range from Mexico to Argentina, where cattle ranching dominates jaguar habitat. It reviews patterns of depredation on calves and adu…

Jaguars are the most water-associated of the big cats in the Americas, and in wetland strongholds they specialize on aquatic and semi-aquatic prey. This overview synthesizes research showing how jagua…

Although associated with wilderness, jaguars increasingly contact human-dominated landscapes as agriculture, ranching and settlement fragment their range across Latin America. This overview synthesise…

At the northern limit of their distribution, in northern Mexico and occasionally the southwestern United States, jaguars persist at low density and high conservation sensitivity. This overview synthes…

This overview synthesises studies identifying which landscape and management variables predict where big cats kill livestock, a recurring quantitative question across conflict research. It reviews con…

Landscape genetics links genetic patterns to the features of the terrain between populations, a toolkit central to studying fragmentation in cats. This overview surveys the methods, from microsatellit…

Black jaguars, often called black panthers, are melanistic individuals of the same species, and their occurrence carries ecological interest. This overview synthesizes research on the genetics of mela…

Black, or melanistic, coats appear repeatedly in wild cats, and this overview reviews this phenomenon and its causes. Melanism, seen famously in black leopards and jaguars, results from genetic varian…

Estimating how many big cats occupy an area is a central and challenging task in their ecology and conservation. This overview reviews the main methods, from individual-identification camera-trap capt…

This overview synthesises evidence linking the depletion of natural prey, peccaries, deer, capybara, guanaco, to increased jaguar and puma depredation on livestock across the Americas. It reviews stud…

Where pumas and jaguars overlap in the Neotropics, the puma often shifts its niche in response to the larger cat. This overview synthesizes research showing that in sympatry pumas tend to take smaller…

This overview reviews how payments-for-ecosystem-services (PES) frameworks have been adapted to compensate communities for hosting large carnivores, treating predator presence as a service worth rewar…

This overview synthesises studies across Latin America comparing ranchers' perceived livestock losses to jaguars and pumas with verified depredation, a recurring theme in big-cat conflict. It reviews…

The jaguar, the largest cat of the Americas, ranges from the southwestern United States to Argentina, and genetic studies have examined how this vast distribution is structured. This overview surveys…

Range expansions often begin with a handful of pioneering individuals making improbable journeys into vacant habitat, and this overview examines how movement science documents these events for cats. W…

Even where forest remains standing, jaguars can decline if their prey is hunted out, a phenomenon known as empty forest or defaunation that interacts with habitat and climate change. This overview sur…

Protected areas are the cornerstone of felid conservation, but their effectiveness at stopping habitat loss varies and is tested by mounting land-use and climate pressure. This overview surveys method…

Individual reserves are rarely large enough to sustain wide-ranging cats on their own, so conservation increasingly relies on networks of protected areas linked by corridors, and this overview examine…

The jaguar's continuous historical range once stretched from the southwestern United States to Argentina, and maintaining connectivity across this expanse is a central conservation goal. This overview…

Although jaguars are best treated as a single species, they do show some geographic genetic structure relevant to conservation. This overview surveys studies documenting differentiation across the jag…

Satellite remote sensing is the backbone of measuring habitat change across the vast ranges of wild cats. This overview surveys the data and methods, optical imagery for land-cover classification, rad…

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…

This overview examines the persistent gap between perceived and actual risk in human-big cat conflict, a theme cutting across lion, tiger, leopard, puma, and jaguar systems. It synthesises research sh…