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🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries
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156 summaries matching “snow leopard”
Research overview: protecting elevation gradients for climate-adaptive felids
OverviewProtecting continuous elevation gradients lets species shift upslope as climate warms while staying within protected habitat, a recurring strategy for montane regions. This overview surveys the ration…
Research overview: range residency versus drift diagnostics
OverviewBefore estimating a home range, one must verify that the animal actually has one, that its movement is range-resident rather than dispersing, migrating, or nomadic. This overview describes diagnostic…
Research overview: reproduction and denning in snow leopards
OverviewSnow leopard reproduction is shaped by the brief alpine summer and the harshness of the high-mountain environment. This overview synthesizes what is known about their breeding season, the use of shelt…
Research overview: reviving Bankhar guardian dogs for Mongolian herder coexistence
OverviewThis overview examines efforts to revive the traditional Mongolian Bankhar livestock-guarding dog as a tool for reducing depredation by snow leopards, wolves, and other predators on the steppe and in…
Research overview: satellite telemetry of snow leopard movements
OverviewGPS satellite collars have transformed understanding of snow leopard ecology, revealing that these cats range over far larger areas than once assumed. This overview surveys telemetry research showing…
Research overview: scent marking and communication in snow leopards
OverviewSolitary snow leopards communicate across their vast ranges through scent marks placed at conspicuous sites. This overview synthesizes research on how snow leopards spray scent on overhanging rocks, m…
Research overview: seasonal and elevational movements of snow leopards
OverviewSnow leopards shift their use of the mountains seasonally, often following the movements of their prey up and down the slopes. This overview synthesizes tracking studies showing how snow leopards desc…
Research overview: snow leopard GPS home ranges far exceed early VHF estimates
OverviewWhen GPS collars replaced VHF on snow leopards, they revealed home ranges dramatically larger than earlier studies had suggested, and this overview examines why. VHF tracking in such rugged, remote te…
Research overview: snow leopard activity patterns from collars
OverviewBeyond mapping where snow leopards go, collar-mounted activity sensors and fix-timing data reveal when they are active, and this overview synthesizes what telemetry shows about their diel and seasonal…
Research overview: snow leopard and wild-prey movement coupling
OverviewPredator movement is often shaped by the movements of prey, and this overview examines how snow leopard ranging relates to the distribution and movements of wild ungulates such as ibex, argali, and bl…
Research overview: snow leopard conflict with Mongolian pastoralists
OverviewThis overview examines human-snow leopard conflict on the Mongolian steppe and mountains, where mobile pastoralists herding goats, sheep, yaks, and horses overlap with snow leopards across vast rangel…
Research overview: snow leopard conflict with mountain herders
OverviewAcross the high mountains of Asia, snow leopards and pastoralists overlap, and depredation on livestock drives conflict central to the cat's conservation. This overview synthesizes studies on the patt…
Research overview: snow leopard core areas and ridge-following movement
OverviewSnow leopards are strongly associated with broken, cliffy terrain, and this overview examines how their fine-scale movement follows ridgelines, cliff bases, and rugged features that provide stalking c…
Research overview: snow leopard depredation on livestock
OverviewAcross the high mountains of Asia, snow leopards prey on domestic sheep, goats, and yaks, creating conflict with herding communities whose livelihoods depend on their animals. This overview surveys re…
Research overview: snow leopard dispersal across Mongolia and the Himalaya
OverviewThis overview synthesizes telemetry evidence on how snow leopards disperse across the vast, rugged mountain systems of Central and South Asia. GPS-collared individuals, especially subadults, have unde…
Research overview: snow leopard distribution models across emissions scenarios
OverviewThis survey reviews how snow leopard species distribution models are run across contrasting greenhouse-gas emissions pathways to bracket the range of plausible future habitat. It explains how downscal…
Research overview: snow leopard genetics and population structure
OverviewGenetic studies of snow leopards have sought to characterize diversity and structure across a range spanning the Himalaya, Tibetan Plateau, and Central Asian mountains. This overview surveys research,…
Research overview: snow leopard habitat selection in alpine terrain
OverviewSnow leopards inhabit the high mountains of Central and South Asia, selecting steep, broken terrain that aids stalking and escape. This overview synthesizes telemetry and survey studies showing that s…
Research overview: snow leopard home ranges revealed by GPS tracking
OverviewGPS collaring has transformed understanding of snow leopard spatial ecology, revealing far larger home ranges than earlier studies suggested. This overview synthesizes tracking work, notably from Mong…
Research overview: snow leopard kill rates from GPS clusters
OverviewApplying the GPS-cluster method developed for pumas to snow leopards has begun to quantify how often these cats kill and what they eat, central questions for both ecology and conflict management. This…
Research overview: snow leopard livestock depredation across the high Himalaya
OverviewThis overview synthesises studies of snow leopard predation on livestock across the mountains of Central and South Asia, from Ladakh and Spiti to the Pamirs and Mongolia. It reviews patterns of loss,…
Research overview: snow leopard pelt and bone trafficking
OverviewSnow leopards are killed and traded for their thick pelts and their bones, the latter increasingly drawn into the same markets that consume tiger and lion bone. This overview surveys research on snow…
Research overview: snow leopard population genetics and habitat fragmentation
OverviewSnow leopards occur at naturally low density across a patchy, mountainous range, so climate-driven habitat fragmentation poses a real risk to gene flow. This overview surveys what noninvasive genetic…
Research overview: snow leopard population monitoring across Central Asia
OverviewSnow leopards inhabit some of the most remote, rugged, high-altitude terrain on Earth, making camera trapping one of the few feasible ways to estimate their numbers. This overview surveys the methods…
Research overview: snow leopard predation on blue sheep and ibex
OverviewAn overview of the snow leopard's dependence on a few wild mountain ungulates, chiefly blue sheep (bharal) and Siberian ibex, across the high ranges of Central Asia. These prey constitute the core of…
Research overview: snow leopard refugia in the Mongolian and Gobi ranges
OverviewThe arid mountains of Mongolia and the Gobi support an important snow leopard population at the dry edge of the species' climate envelope. This overview surveys how warming and changing precipitation…
Research overview: snow leopard reliance on wild sheep and goats
OverviewSnow leopards depend heavily on mountain ungulates, especially blue sheep and ibex, across their range. This overview synthesizes diet studies showing that these wild caprids form the core of the snow…
Research overview: snow leopard seasonal elevational movements
OverviewSnow leopards inhabit steep mountain landscapes where conditions and prey shift markedly with elevation and season, and this overview examines how their movements track these changes. GPS telemetry ha…
Research overview: snow leopard transboundary corridors
OverviewSnow leopards range across roughly a dozen countries in the mountains of Central and South Asia, and their movements routinely cross international borders, making transboundary connectivity essential…
Research overview: snow leopard wild prey and rangeland competition
OverviewSnow leopards depend primarily on wild mountain ungulates such as blue sheep, ibex, argali, and marmots, and the health of these prey populations governs snow leopard numbers. This overview surveys re…