🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

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

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 their Nature note, Clubb and Mason developed a fuller comparative model of which natural traits predict poor captive welfare in carnivores. Across dozens of species they tested whether hom…

Clubb R, Mason GJ · Applied Animal Behaviour Science · 2007

Mellor elaborated the Five Domains Model, which structures welfare assessment around four physical and functional domains, nutrition, environment, health and behaviour, that feed into a fifth, the ani…

Mellor DJ · Animals · 2017

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 morphological study reconstructed relationships among the pantherine cats while explicitly incorporating fossil taxa and testing how missing data affect tree inference. Working from cranial and s…

Christiansen P · Cladistics · 2008

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

Ritchie and Johnson reviewed the mechanisms by which top predators suppress mesopredators and the conditions under which that suppression breaks down. They emphasized that apex carnivores limit smalle…

Ritchie, E.G. & Johnson, C.N. · Ecology Letters · 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

A foundational quantitative analysis of what lions actually select to kill versus what is merely available. Hayward and Kerley compiled prey records from across Africa and weighted them against prey a…

Hayward, M.W. & Kerley, G.I.H. · Journal of Zoology · 2005

Though not a felid, the spotted hyena is the dominant competitor and kleptoparasite of African big cats, so its prey preferences are central to felid dynamics. Hayward compiled kill and diet records a…

Hayward, M.W. · Journal of Zoology · 2006

Cusack and colleagues directly compared placing cameras randomly across the landscape versus targeting them on game trails, using paired deployments in an African savanna. They found that trail-based…

Jeremy J. Cusack, Amy J. Dickman, J. Marcus Rowcliffe, Chris Carbone, David W. Macdonald, Tim Coulson · PLOS ONE · 2015

This study compared the outbred Serengeti lion population with the small, geographically isolated Ngorongoro Crater population, which descended from few founders and experienced inbreeding. The author…

Wildt DE, Bush M, Goodrowe KL, Packer C, Pusey AE, Brown JL, Joslin P, O'Brien SJ · Nature · 1987

Using decades of individual life-history records from wild lions and baboons, this study tested whether females experience a true post-reproductive lifespan analogous to human menopause. The authors f…

Packer C, Tatar M, Collins A · Nature · 1998

This overview synthesizes telemetry research on African lion movement and pride ranging, drawing on long-term projects such as the Oxford-led study in and around Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe. GPS co…

The worlds only wild Asiatic lions live in and around Gir in Gujarat, India, where their expanding population increasingly occupies agricultural land, villages and the periphery of towns. This overvie…

This overview surveys human-lion coexistence in India's Gir landscape, the last refuge of the Asiatic lion, where pastoralist Maldhari communities graze livestock within and around the protected fores…

Cecil was a male lion fitted with a GPS collar as part of a long-term Oxford-led research project in and around Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe, whose illegal killing by a trophy hunter in 2015 drew wo…

Lentiviruses related to domestic-cat FIV circulate widely in wild felid species including lions, pumas, leopards, and others, often at high seroprevalence yet apparently with limited disease in their…

This overview reviews the development of geographic information system (GIS) databases and surveillance systems that systematically record big-cat conflict incidents for analysis and management. It sy…

Gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonist implants offer a reversible method of suppressing reproduction in cats by downregulating the reproductive axis after an initial stimulation. This overview survey…

Hepatozoon is a tick-associated protozoan parasite, transmitted not by tick bite but by ingestion of infected ticks, that commonly infects wild felids including lions. This overview surveys the biolog…

This overview synthesises the international guidance developed under the IUCN's human-wildlife conflict and coexistence efforts, which distil principles and good practice for managing conflict involvi…

Bovine tuberculosis, caused by Mycobacterium bovis, established itself in Kruger National Park after spilling from cattle into African buffalo, and lions preying on infected buffalo became widely expo…

Many of the most important felid diseases, from distemper to leukemia virus to Toxoplasma, originate at the interface of domestic animals, wildlife and people, making them quintessential One Health pr…