🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Beyond compensating losses, some programs pay communities or landowners directly for conserving predators or their habitat, aligning economic incentives with conservation. This overview surveys resear…

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…

Reconstructing the felid tree has driven the adoption of increasingly sophisticated analytical methods, from single-gene trees to genome-wide coalescent and network approaches. This overview surveys h…

This overview synthesizes the deep-time evolution of cats, from the Oligocene Proailurus and Miocene Pseudaelurus stem felids through the divergence of the conical-toothed Felinae and the sabertoothed…

Habitat loss and fragmentation increasingly isolate cat populations into small patches separated by inhospitable terrain, reducing effective population size and gene flow. This overview surveys how co…

Population viability analysis, PVA, uses demographic and genetic models to estimate the probability that a population will persist over a given time, helping conservationists assess risk and compare m…

Researchers have applied predictive modelling and machine learning to anti-poaching, using past patrol and poaching data to forecast where illegal activity is most likely and to optimize where rangers…

Artificial light alters the behaviour, abundance and detectability of the rodents, birds and insects that felids hunt, indirectly affecting predators through the prey base. This overview synthesises r…

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…

This overview surveys research examining how well protected areas sustain large carnivore populations and which reserve characteristics predict persistence. Studies show that reserve size, connectivit…

Individual protected areas are often too small to hold viable big cat populations on their own, making connectivity between reserves critical. This overview surveys research on how isolation affects c…

Protected areas are not permanent; governments sometimes weaken, shrink, or abolish them, a set of actions researchers call PADDD, for protected-area downgrading, downsizing, and degazettement. This o…

Protected areas are governed in many ways, from strict state-run parks to community conservancies and indigenous-managed lands, and governance shapes both conservation outcomes and social justice. Thi…

The effectiveness of protected areas for big cats rests heavily on rangers, yet many reserves are chronically understaffed and underfunded. This overview surveys research quantifying the resources nee…

Rangers are not only enforcers but also data collectors, and ranger-based monitoring uses their patrols to gather information on wildlife, threats, and law-enforcement effort. This overview surveys re…

Conservation funding is limited, prompting research into how to maximize the return on investment, achieving the greatest conservation benefit per dollar spent on big cats and other carnivores. This o…

Restoring large carnivores can reshape entire ecosystems through trophic cascades, in which predators influence prey behavior and numbers, which in turn affects vegetation and other species. This over…

Roads fragment habitat, kill animals, and act as barriers to movement, making road ecology an important field for carnivore conservation. This overview surveys research on how roads affect big cats an…

Whole-genome sequencing reveals long stretches where an individual inherited identical segments from both parents, called runs of homozygosity, which accumulate with inbreeding and small population si…

The effectiveness of wildlife crossings depends partly on shielding animals from the light and noise of adjacent traffic, factors that can deter wary felids from using overpasses and underpasses. This…

Wire snares are among the most pervasive and indiscriminate threats to big cats, killing or maiming tigers, leopards, lions, and other predators directly and decimating the prey populations they depen…

Reintroducing big cats is as much a social undertaking as a biological one, since restored predators can prey on livestock and provoke fear, and local opposition can doom a project regardless of its e…

How animals are released strongly affects reintroduction success, and conservationists distinguish soft release, in which animals are held in on-site enclosures and supported after release, from hard…

The deep origins of the cat family trace to small civet-like carnivores of the Oligocene and Miocene, notably Proailurus and the later Pseudaelurus, from which both the modern cats and the sabertooths…

Reintroducing large carnivores is difficult and often fails, prompting research into what distinguishes successful efforts. This overview surveys studies and the IUCN guidelines that synthesize lesson…

Systematic conservation planning provides a structured, transparent approach to deciding where to focus conservation, using explicit goals and software tools such as Marxan to design efficient network…

A growing array of technologies, including drones, thermal cameras, acoustic sensors, and networked alarm systems, has been deployed to detect and deter poaching of big cats and their prey. This overv…

The Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool, SMART, has become a global standard for making ranger patrols data-driven across big cat reserves. This overview surveys research on how SMART records patrol…

The bay cat lineage comprises three Asian cats: the Asian golden cat, the bay cat of Borneo, and the marbled cat. This overview surveys the genetic evidence establishing this lineage as one of the eig…

The black-footed cat, one of the smallest wild cats, is a southern African member of the Felis lineage notable for its fierce hunting and, in captivity, for inherited kidney disease. This overview sur…