🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

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…

Snow leopard populations are distributed across a network of mountain ranges separated by valleys and basins, and genetic studies probe how connected they remain. This overview synthesizes work using…

The snow leopard inhabits the high mountains of Central and South Asia and is the most basal or near-basal member of the genus Panthera in many analyses. This overview surveys genomic studies examinin…

The mountains of High Asia store water as snow and ice, and accelerating glacial retreat reshapes downstream hydrology that supports the meadows and prey of snow leopards. This overview surveys how ch…

Big cats select habitat at multiple scales, balancing the need for prey, cover for stalking, water, and shelter against the risks posed by competitors and humans. This overview synthesizes research sh…

The advent of GPS collars and biologging sensors has revolutionized the study of big-cat movement, hunting, and energetics. This overview synthesizes how high-resolution location data revealed kill si…

An overview of the ecological mechanism by which warming pushes the alpine treeline upslope and squeezes the open, rocky terrain snow leopards use. As shrubs and forest advance into former alpine mead…

This overview examines efforts to apply accelerometer and GPS-cluster methods to snow leopards, whose remote, high-altitude haunts make direct observation nearly impossible. By combining collars with…

Field immobilization of leopards and snow leopards presents distinctive challenges, including the elusive, often nocturnal behavior of these cats, rugged or high-altitude terrain, and extreme cold in…

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…

Where cats and livestock overlap, the distribution of herds and the layout of settlements shape predator movement, and this overview synthesizes telemetry insights relevant to conflict. GPS data show…

This overview synthesises evidence that competition between domestic livestock and wild ungulates, blue sheep, ibex, argali, depresses natural prey and increases snow leopard reliance on livestock. It…

This overview examines how molecular clocks, calibrated with fossils, have been used to estimate when the living big cats diverged from one another. Genetic studies place the origin of the Panthera li…

Whether the snow leopard should be split into subspecies is an active debate. This overview contrasts the traditional treatment of the snow leopard as a monotypic species with a 2017 proposal recogniz…

The history of cat classification is largely a story of tension and eventual integration between morphological and molecular approaches. This overview compares the two: morphology, including skull mor…

This overview synthesises research on the social and ecological factors influencing herder attitudes toward snow leopards and wolves across the trans-Himalaya, emphasising that tolerance is shaped at…

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…

Whether snow leopards maintain stable home ranges or wander nomadically is a genuine and consequential question, and this overview examines the evidence telemetry has brought to bear. Resident adults…

Snow leopards inhabit remote, rugged mountains where direct observation is nearly impossible, making noninvasive genetics essential for studying them. This overview surveys how scat-based DNA analysis…

Because most wild cats are elusive and difficult to capture, conservation geneticists increasingly rely on noninvasive samples such as scat, hair, and shed cells to obtain DNA without handling the ani…

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…

Zoos and breeding programs maintain studbooks to manage the genetics of captive cat populations, aiming to retain diversity and avoid inbreeding across generations. This overview surveys how pedigree…

Snow leopards are exquisitely adapted to life at high altitude in bitter cold. This overview synthesizes what is known about their dense fur, long thick tail used for balance and warmth, enlarged nasa…

Although the snow leopard was traditionally treated as a single undivided species, genetic studies using noninvasive samples have proposed dividing it into several geographic subspecies or management…

Reducing livestock losses is central to securing snow leopards, and predator-proof corrals are among the most effective tools. This overview synthesizes research and program experience showing that re…

This overview reviews efforts to reinforce nighttime livestock corrals across snow leopard range to prevent the catastrophic multiple-kill events that occur when a cat enters an open pen and kills man…

The number of snow leopards a mountain landscape can hold is set largely by the abundance of wild ungulate prey. This overview synthesizes research linking the density of blue sheep, ibex, and argali…

A survey of the minimum prey abundance large cats need to maintain viable populations and why prey depletion is a leading cause of felid decline. Because predator density scales with prey biomass, the…

Since the first lightly sequenced domestic cat genome, feline genomics has advanced to highly contiguous, chromosome-level assemblies for the domestic cat and an expanding set of wild species. This ov…

As suitable habitat contracts to higher, cooler refugia, the corridors linking snow leopard populations become critical for gene flow and recolonization. This overview surveys the methods researchers…