🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

The Canada lynx is tightly linked to boreal forests and the cyclical abundance of snowshoe hares, and its genetics reflect both high mobility and sensitivity to habitat at its southern range edge. Thi…

After fire, vegetation regrows through successional stages that determine when and how prey and predators return. This overview surveys how post-fire recovery shapes habitat quality for cats, the flus…

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…

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…

Roads affect cats through direct mortality and through the barrier effect that fragments populations, a central theme in carnivore conservation. This overview surveys research quantifying how highways…

Urban infrastructure shapes the genetics of bobcat populations by impeding movement and gene flow across roads and developed corridors. This overview synthesises landscape-genetics studies, several fr…

Cats living in temperate climates often show seasonal patterns of reproduction, with estrus and breeding concentrated in particular times of year, whereas tropical species may cycle year-round. This o…

A survey of how the Canada lynx's large, well-furred feet give it an advantage hunting snowshoe hares in deep, soft snow, and how snow conditions structure its competition with other predators. The ly…

A central theme in northern felid climate research is that the dividing line between Canada lynx and bobcat tracks snow conditions. This overview surveys the morphological and ecological basis for tha…

The bobcat is a widespread solitary North American felid whose behaviour has been studied through radio-telemetry and camera traps. This overview surveys research on bobcat spatial organisation, with…

Stable-isotope analysis of felid tissues offers a powerful way to quantify how much of a cat diet derives from anthropogenic versus natural sources, complementing scat analysis. This overview synthesi…

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…

Detecting whether bobcats are advancing into lynx range requires repeated, detection-corrected surveys across the contact zone. This overview surveys the field and analytical methods, snow-track surve…

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…

Suburban bobcats commonly adjust their activity timing to avoid peak human presence, becoming more nocturnal or crepuscular in developed areas while remaining more diurnal in wildland. This overview s…

The lynx lineage has a rich fossil record that informs the origin of modern species. This overview surveys the paleontological history, including the Issoire lynx, Lynx issiodorensis, an extinct Plioc…

Toxoplasma is maintained in both domestic cycles centered on house cats and sylvatic cycles driven by wild felids, and the two intersect in complex ways. This overview surveys how domestic and wild tr…

The lynx lineage comprises four species: the Eurasian lynx, the Iberian lynx, the Canada lynx, and the bobcat. This overview surveys their relationships and biogeography, explaining how molecular phyl…

Mesopredator release, in which the decline of top predators allows smaller predators to increase and overexploit prey, is a foundational concept linking urban fragmentation to biodiversity loss. This…

Ticks, fleas, mosquitoes and tsetse flies transmit many of the pathogens that affect wild cats, making vector ecology central to felid disease. This overview surveys the vectors responsible for spread…

Wild felids living near cities are exposed to pathogens including feline immunodeficiency virus, feline leukemia virus and others, sometimes shared with domestic cats, raising conservation and One Hea…

Because cats are relatively susceptible to plague and range widely, wild and domestic felids serve as useful sentinels for detecting Yersinia pestis circulation. This overview surveys how serosurveys…

This synthesis reviews the conservation standing of the bobcat, broadly secure and even expanding thanks to its adaptability, wide range, and recovery from past overharvest. It weighs regulated fur ha…

This synthesis reviews the conservation standing of the lynxes as a group, which spans nearly the full range of extinction risk. The bobcat and Eurasian lynx are broadly secure, the latter recovering…

This synthesis used southern sea otters as sentinels to trace how the cat-derived parasite Toxoplasma gondii moves from land into the sea. The authors integrated parasitology, oceanography and epidemi…

P. A. Conrad, M. A. Miller, C. Kreuder, et al. · International Journal for Parasitology · 2005

This study combined toxicology, gene-expression and immune profiling to show that bobcats exposed to anticoagulant rodenticides in urban southern California exhibited altered immune function, providin…

Serieys LEK, Lea AJ, Epeldegui M, Armenta TC, Moriarty J, VandeWoude S, Carver S, Foley J, Wayne RK, Riley SPD, Uittenbogaart CH · Proceedings of the Royal Society B · 2018