🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

The COVID-19 lockdowns created an unprecedented, sudden reduction in human activity dubbed the anthropause, and this overview examines what it revealed and may yet reveal about how cats respond to hum…

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…

Standard home ranges flatten an animal's world onto a two-dimensional map, but cats in mountainous terrain move through strongly three-dimensional space, and their ranges shift across seasons. This ov…

Roads impede wildlife not only by the physical danger of traffic but through sensory disturbance, and this overview examines how noise and artificial light can deter felids from approaching or crossin…

An overview of how large cats can structure ecosystems from the top down, with effects rippling through herbivores to vegetation and beyond. By killing and frightening herbivores, apex felids such as…

Quantifying how much two animals' ranges overlap is central to questions of territoriality, social structure, and resource competition, and this overview surveys the statistical indices used. Measures…

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…

Water sources and riparian corridors are disproportionately important to felids in human-dominated landscapes, providing drinking water, prey, cover and movement routes through otherwise hostile devel…

Wildlife crossings, from large vegetated overpasses to underpasses and culverts, are a primary engineering response to the roads that fragment felid populations near cities. This overview synthesises…

DeVault, Rhodes and Shivik synthesized the neglected ecology of carrion use, arguing that scavenging is far more pervasive and important than traditionally recognized and that most carnivores, includi…

DeVault, T.L., Rhodes, O.E. & Shivik, J.A. · Oikos · 2003

This comprehensive study screened thousands of samples from many felid species plus hyenas for feline immunodeficiency virus and sequenced isolates to map viral diversity. The authors confirmed that F…

J. L. Troyer, J. Pecon-Slattery, M. E. Roelke, et al. · Journal of Virology · 2005

Prugh and colleagues synthesized global evidence that the worldwide decline of apex predators has triggered widespread increases in mid-sized carnivores, with far-reaching ecological and economic cons…

Prugh, L.R., Stoner, C.J., Epps, C.W., Bean, W.T. et al. · BioScience · 2009

Estes and a large group of coauthors synthesized evidence that the loss of apex consumers, including big cats, is among humanity's most pervasive influences on nature. The review marshaled cases acros…

Estes, J.A., Terborgh, J., Brashares, J.S. et al. · Science · 2011

Wilmers and colleagues showed that reintroduced wolves in Yellowstone act as ecosystem benefactors by providing a steady, more evenly distributed supply of carrion to scavengers, buffering them agains…

Wilmers, C.C., Crabtree, R.L., Smith, D.W., Murphy, K.M. & Getz, W.M. · Journal of Animal Ecology · 2003

Negroes and colleagues estimated puma density in the central Brazilian Cerrado using camera traps, confronting the difficulty of individually identifying pumas from their relatively unmarked coats by…

Nuno Negroes, Peter Sarmento, Joao Cruz, Catarina Eira, Erica Revilla, et al. · Journal of Wildlife Management · 2010

Sunquist and Sunquist's comprehensive reference compiles the natural history, ecology and behavior of all wild felid species, with extensive treatment of diet, prey selection, hunting modes and predat…

Sunquist, M. & Sunquist, F. · University of Chicago Press · 2002