🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

This overview examines the evolutionary geography of the cheetah lineage and its New World relatives. Molecular and fossil evidence indicate that the cheetah-puma group has a complex transatlantic his…

An overview of how solitary cats protect and prolong access to their kills by caching them. Pumas cover carcasses with vegetation and soil and revisit them over several days, while leopards famously h…

An overview of how camera-trap arrays and occupancy modeling are used to study the spatial and temporal relationships between pumas and their prey. By recording where and when cats and prey are detect…

An overview of how the kills of large felids redistribute energy and nutrients through ecosystems. Carcasses and the cats' partly eaten remains create nutrient hotspots that fertilize soils and vegeta…

A survey of the diverse communities of vertebrates and invertebrates that exploit carcasses produced by cats, and how those carcasses structure scavenger interactions. Felid kills attract a succession…

Circuit theory, which models animal movement as electrical current flowing across a resistance surface, has become a standard tool for mapping connectivity for wide-ranging cats. This overview surveys…

Climate change interacts with urbanisation to reshape the conditions felids face near cities, altering prey availability, water resources, heat exposure, fire regimes and the viability of corridors. T…

Beyond P-22, several GPS-collared mountain lions in the National Park Service Santa Monica Mountains study have made rare, documented crossings of major freeways, including the 405 and 101, each event…

Feline immunodeficiency virus causes an AIDS-like syndrome in domestic cats yet has long been assumed benign in its wild hosts. This overview examines the evidence for and against that assumption, com…

From leopards in Mumbai to pumas in Los Angeles, caracals in Cape Town and fishing cats in Colombo, a remarkable diversity of felids inhabits the worlds cities, offering a comparative window on urban…

An overview of the long-running question of whether cougar predation adds to or merely substitutes for other deer mortality. If predation is compensatory, cats mainly take individuals that would have…

This overview examines the evolutionary relationships of Miracinonyx and the now well-supported conclusion that its cheetah-like form arose through convergence rather than common ancestry with the tru…

The cheetah and the extinct American cheetah independently evolved a slender, long-limbed body built for high-speed pursuit, a striking case of convergence given their separate ancestries within the p…

This overview synthesises how habitat corridors and connectivity shape big-cat conflict, focusing on the tension between maintaining predator movement and the conflict that arises where corridors pass…

Wildlife crossings and fencing are expensive, and this overview examines how their costs are weighed against benefits in road-mitigation planning. Benefits include reduced wildlife-vehicle collisions,…

An overview of cases where puma predation, though ecologically natural, poses risks to endangered or reintroduced prey populations. Examples include predation on woodland caribou, bighorn sheep, and r…

A survey of evidence that cougars can indirectly shape streamside plant communities by limiting and frightening deer. Where cougars are abundant, reduced and more wary deer browse cottonwoods, willows…

Long-term study of pumas in the deserts of the American Southwest illuminated how these cats persist in arid mountains and how their populations function as sources and sinks. This overview synthesize…

Dispersal is central to puma ecology, with young males traveling long distances to establish ranges while females often settle nearer their natal areas. This overview synthesizes telemetry and genetic…

In western North America, puma populations track deer and other ungulate prey whose abundance and condition fluctuate with drought. This overview surveys how dry years reduce forage, lower prey recrui…

Drought intensifies competition between people and predators for scarce water, forage, and livestock, often heightening human-wildlife conflict. This overview surveys how dry periods push cats toward…

A survey of how the kills of large cats function as a form of ecosystem engineering, structuring scavenger communities, nutrient flow and local biodiversity. Because predators such as pumas, leopards…

Living near people imposes hidden energetic costs on felids through interrupted hunting, abandoned kills, vigilance, detours around development and altered activity timing. This overview synthesises a…

A survey of the conditions under which big cats switch from hunting to scavenging, and what this means for their ecology. Although large felids lack the scavenging specializations of hyenas and vultur…

The presence of cats in South America results from the Great American Biotic Interchange, when the Isthmus of Panama connected the Americas and allowed northern mammals to disperse south. This overvie…

An overview of how predation by cats can influence the spread and prevalence of disease in their prey populations. By selectively removing sick, weak or behaviorally abnormal individuals, predators ma…

Because feline immunodeficiency virus evolves rapidly and is transmitted through fighting, its genetic signal can reveal how pumas move across fragmented landscapes. This overview surveys studies that…

The wildland-urban interface, where development meets wildland vegetation, is expanding and is the zone where climate-driven fire most directly intersects with cat populations like urban-edge pumas an…

The puma population of the Santa Monica Mountains is hemmed in by freeways and the Pacific Ocean, producing one of the most acute cases of urban carnivore genetic isolation on record. This overview sy…

This overview synthesises emerging priorities and frontiers in human-big cat conflict and coexistence research. It reviews calls for more rigorous impact evaluation, greater integration of social scie…