🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Despite descending from wildcats only thousands of years ago, domestic cats differ subtly in genetics and behavior, and characterizing this divergence illuminates the domestication process. This overv…

Ocelots at the northern edge of their range in Texas show severe genetic erosion, with small isolated populations separated by agriculture and roads exhibiting low diversity and signs of inbreeding. T…

Pumas living near major cities, such as those in the Santa Monica and Santa Ana Mountains of California, are increasingly hemmed in by freeways and development, fragmenting their populations and restr…

The caracals of the Cape Peninsula occupy a near-island of habitat bounded by ocean, the city of Cape Town and agricultural land, raising concern about genetic isolation analogous to freeway-bounded f…

Small populations accumulate deleterious mutations, the genetic load, but sustained inbreeding can also expose and remove the most harmful recessive variants through a process called purging. This ove…

Having passed through a severe bottleneck, the Iberian lynx carries reduced genetic diversity, which compounds its vulnerability to climate and disease stress. This overview surveys how genetic monito…

Wildlife corridors aim to reconnect fragmented cat populations, and genetics provides a direct test of whether they actually restore gene flow. This overview surveys how landscape and population genet…

The Florida panther’s recovery hinged on a landmark genetic restoration that introduced Texas pumas to relieve severe inbreeding, with implications for disease resilience. This overview surveys how th…

Genetic rescue refers to deliberately introducing individuals from another population to boost the fitness of a small, inbred population through new genetic variation. This overview surveys the concep…

When urban felid populations become severely inbred, genetic rescue, the introduction of individuals or gene flow from other populations, can restore diversity and demographic vigour. This overview sy…

The Florida panther, a population of puma isolated in the southeastern United States, became a landmark case of inbreeding and genetic rescue. This overview synthesizes how the small, isolated populat…

The Florida panther, a small isolated puma population, suffered severe inbreeding manifesting in physical defects such as kinked tails, undescended testicles, and heart abnormalities, prompting a land…

In many cats, one sex disperses farther than the other, with males typically moving while females remain near their natal range, a pattern that leaves distinct genetic footprints. This overview survey…

The clouded leopard, long treated as a single species, was shown by genetic and morphological analysis to comprise two distinct species: the mainland clouded leopard and the Sunda clouded leopard of B…

The European wildcat, Felis silvestris, persists in fragmented populations from Iberia and Scotland through central and eastern Europe to the Caucasus. This overview surveys studies of its genetic str…

The sand cat is a small felid of the deserts of North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia, with adaptations for life in extreme arid heat. This overview surveys its placement within the Felis li…

Cats vary widely in how friendly and social they are with people, and research has sought the sources of this variation. This overview surveys evidence that feline sociability toward humans arises fro…

Pallas's cat, or the manul, is a small, densely furred cat of the Central Asian steppe whose phylogenetic placement was clarified by molecular data linking it to the leopard cat lineage. This overview…

The jaguarundi is an unusually shaped small cat of the Americas, with an elongated body and uniform coat, whose molecular placement revealed it as a close relative of the puma and cheetah within the p…

The South China tiger, considered the ancestral or stem population of modern tigers by some analyses, is likely extinct in the wild and survives only in a small, intensively managed captive population…

The end of the Pleistocene saw the loss of many large cats, including sabertooths, cave lions, American lions, and the American cheetah, as part of the broader megafaunal extinction. This overview sur…

Beyond color, cats vary in coat length and texture, from longhaired Persians to the curly Rex breeds and the nearly hairless Sphynx, each with an identified genetic basis. This overview surveys the va…

Several tiger populations vanished in the 20th century, including the Caspian, Bali, and Javan tigers, and ancient or historical DNA has been used to clarify their relationships. This overview surveys…

Several popular domestic cat breeds were created by crossing house cats with wild felid species, including the Bengal from the Asian leopard cat, the Savannah from the serval, and the Chausie from the…

Several striking morphological variants in domestic cats have known genetic bases, including the taillessness of the Manx cat and extra toes in polydactyl cats. This overview surveys the discovery tha…

The Chinese mountain cat, a poorly known felid endemic to the Tibetan Plateau region, has been the subject of debate over whether it is a distinct species, a wildcat subspecies, and whether it contrib…

The Caspian tiger of Central and Western Asia went extinct in the twentieth century, but genetic analysis of museum specimens revealed a close relationship to the surviving Amur tiger, suggesting the…

The serval and the caracal are medium-sized African cats of the caracal lineage, both relatively widespread but facing localized pressures. This overview surveys their genetic relationships within the…

Beyond genes, the architecture of felid genomes, including repetitive elements, transposons, and structural variants, shapes evolution and complicates assembly. This overview surveys the composition o…

Genomic erosion refers to the cumulative loss of genetic diversity and accumulation of harmful variation that accompanies population decline, and cats provide some of its clearest examples. This overv…