🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Funston, Mills and Biggs challenged the stereotype that male lions are merely scavengers reliant on females' kills. Working in Kruger National Park, they showed that male lions hunt effectively, parti…

Funston, P.J., Mills, M.G.L. & Biggs, H.C. · Journal of Zoology · 2001

This study combined GPS tracking and genetics to show how major roads isolate a mountain lion population in the Santa Monica Mountains, with freeways acting as near-total barriers to movement. The aut…

Riley, S.P.D., Serieys, L.E.K., Pollinger, J.P., Sikich, J.A., Dalbeck, L., Wayne, R.K., Ernest, H.B. · Current Biology · 2014

Riley and colleagues used GPS telemetry and genetics to show that the small puma population in the Santa Monica Mountains was severely isolated by surrounding freeways, with the 101 in particular near…

Seth P. D. Riley, Laurel E. K. Serieys, John P. Pollinger, Jeffrey A. Sikich, Lisa Dalbeck, Robert K. Wayne, Holly B. Ernest · Current Biology · 2014

Williams and colleagues built custom SMART collars combining GPS, accelerometers, and physiological calibration to measure, for the first time, the moment-to-moment energy expenditure of wild pumas as…

Terrie M. Williams, Lisa Wolfe, Tracy Davis, Traci Kendall, Beau Richter, Yiwei Wang, Caleb Bryce, G. Hugh Elkaim, Christopher C. Wilmers · Science · 2014

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

Woodroffe and Frank examined how retaliatory and preemptive killing of lions on Kenyan rangelands affects populations at local and regional scales. Combining mortality records with spatial analysis ar…

Rosie Woodroffe, Laurence G. Frank · Animal Conservation · 2005

Creel and Creel demonstrated that African wild dog populations are limited not by prey scarcity but by competition with lions and spotted hyenas, which kill dogs and steal their kills. Analyzing demog…

Creel, S. & Creel, N.M. · Conservation Biology · 1996

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

This continental assessment combined population data from across Africa to show that lion numbers have fallen sharply in most regions, with West, Central, and East African populations in steep decline…

Bauer H, Chapron G, Nowell K, et al. · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2015

Packer and colleagues analysed more than 800 lion attacks on people across rural Tanzania between 1990 and 2004, one of the largest quantitative datasets on big-cat predation on humans. They found att…

Craig Packer, Dennis Ikanda, Bernard Kissui, Hadas Kushnir · Nature · 2005

Hazzah, Borgerhoff Mulder, and Frank investigated the social and economic drivers of lion killing among Maasai communities near Amboseli, Kenya, and assessed an incentive-based compensation scheme. Th…

Leela Hazzah, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Laurence Frank · Biological Conservation · 2009

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

In this follow-up, Durant used experimental playbacks and detailed observation to show that Serengeti cheetahs actively avoid lions and spotted hyenas at fine spatial and temporal scales, moving away…

Durant, S.M. · Behavioral Ecology · 2000

This landmark analysis showed that the size of a male lion coalition strongly predicts its tenure over prides and its lifetime reproductive output. Larger coalitions, often formed by littermates or co…

Bygott, J. D., Bertram, B. C. R., Hanby, J. P. · Nature · 1979

This study combined ancient and modern mitochondrial DNA to reconstruct the lion's maternal history, including extinct populations such as the Barbary and Cape lions. The authors used a spatially expl…

Barnett R, Yamaguchi N, Shapiro B, et al. · BMC Evolutionary Biology · 2014

This study used multiple genetic markers to compare mainland and Sunda island clouded leopards and found divergence comparable to that between well-recognized cat species. The authors showed that clou…

Buckley-Beason VA, Johnson WE, Nash WG, et al. · Current Biology · 2006

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 long-term tracking of marked mountain lions, this study described how pumas organize their use of space through a land-tenure system maintained largely by mutual avoidance. Resident adults…

Seidensticker, J. C., Hornocker, M. G., Wiles, W. V., Messick, J. P. · Wildlife Monographs · 1973

This landmark monograph reported one of the first multi-year radio-telemetry studies of cougars, conducted in the rugged Idaho Primitive Area. By collaring and following individual lions, the team doc…

John Seidensticker, Maurice Hornocker, Wilbur Wiles, John Messick · Wildlife Monographs · 1973

Cooper examined why lions live in groups by testing whether larger groups better retain their kills against kleptoparasitic spotted hyenas. Observations showed that single or paired lions frequently l…

Cooper, S.M. · African Journal of Ecology · 1991

Challenging the assumption that FIV is harmless in its natural hosts, this study examined wild African lions for clinical and pathological signs associated with feline immunodeficiency virus infection…

M. E. Roelke, J. Pecon-Slattery, S. Taylor, et al. · Virology · 2009

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

This comparative study applied trait ratings to multiple felid species, including domestic cats, African lions, snow leopards, clouded leopards, and Scottish wildcats, to ask whether personality dimen…

Marieke Gartner, David Powell, Alexander Weiss · Journal of Comparative Psychology · 2014

Gartner, Powell and Weiss applied systematic personality assessment to four felid species, having keepers rate individuals on behavioural traits and then analysing the underlying structure. They ident…

Gartner MC, Powell DM, Weiss A · Journal of Comparative Psychology · 2014

This study used mitochondrial and nuclear markers across the lion's range to map genetic structure and found a deep division between northern lions (West and Central Africa plus Asia) and southern lio…

Bertola LD, Jongbloed H, van der Gaag KJ, et al. · Scientific Reports · 2016

This study used ancient and modern DNA to reconstruct the evolutionary relationships and population history of lions, including the extinct American lion and Eurasian cave lion. The genetic data resol…

Ross Barnett, Beth Shapiro, Ian Barnes, Simon Y. W. Ho, Joachim Burger, Nobuyuki Yamaguchi, et al. · Molecular Ecology · 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

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