🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Landscape genetics has become a powerful tool for assessing whether tiger corridors actually carry gene flow between reserves in central India. This overview surveys research that samples tiger DNA ac…

An overview of how leopards coexist with dominant tigers in Asian forests by partitioning prey size, space and activity. Where tigers are abundant, leopards tend to take smaller prey, shift toward are…

This overview synthesises research on the Bengal tigers of the Sundarbans, the mangrove delta straddling India and Bangladesh, notorious for a comparatively high rate of fatal attacks on people. It re…

Conservation genetics distinguishes formal subspecies from management units and evolutionarily significant units, and this distinction is central to tiger planning. This overview explains how managers…

This overview synthesises research using spatial analysis to identify hotspots where big-cat attacks on livestock or people concentrate, enabling targeted mitigation. It reviews methods, kernel densit…

Tigress cubs depend on their mother for up to two years while acquiring the skills to hunt large prey alone. This overview surveys research on tiger maternal care, including den selection, the gradual…

This overview synthesises research on how news and social media portray big-cat attacks and conflict, and how that framing shapes public attitudes, fear, and policy. It reviews studies showing that se…

An overview of how the loss of large cats such as lions, tigers and pumas can unleash smaller predators with cascading consequences for biodiversity. When apex felids decline, the intermediate carnivo…

Estimating how many big cats occupy an area is a central and challenging task in their ecology and conservation. This overview reviews the main methods, from individual-identification camera-trap capt…

Mathematical models help predict how diseases spread through felid populations and whether outbreaks will fizzle or explode. This overview surveys epidemiological modeling applied to wild cats, from e…

As parts of the Sundarbans are projected to be lost to the sea, researchers ask which areas might persist as climate refugia and whether tigers could relocate within or beyond the delta. This overview…

India's periodic all-India tiger estimation is among the largest wildlife surveys on Earth, combining sign-based occupancy across vast landscapes with camera-trap capture-recapture at intensively samp…

A survey of how cats influence prey populations through fear and disturbance rather than direct killing. Risk effects include reduced foraging, heightened vigilance, altered habitat use, physiological…

Estimating where tigers occur across vast landscapes requires methods that handle imperfect detection over large areas. This overview synthesizes the use of occupancy modeling, which infers the propor…

Where camera-trap density estimation is too costly to deploy everywhere, occupancy modelling lets researchers map where tigers are present across large landscapes using detection-nondetection data fro…

Sumatra has lost vast areas of lowland rainforest to oil palm and pulpwood plantations, the principal driver of Sumatran tiger habitat loss. This overview surveys how plantation expansion clears and f…

Potent opioids, including butorphanol and ultra-potent agents in some protocols, are incorporated into big-cat anesthesia to enhance analgesia and immobilization, often combined with dissociatives and…

Understanding which male tigers father cubs in wild populations clarifies the species' mating system and informs management of small, fragmented populations. This overview surveys efforts to assess pa…

Much of Sumatra's lowland forest grows on carbon-rich peat that, when drained for plantations, becomes highly flammable, fueling the recurrent fire and haze crises that also degrade tiger habitat. Thi…

Play is prominent in young big cats and persists in enriched captive settings, where it supports physical development and welfare. This overview surveys research on social and object play in lion, tig…

A survey of the strong, general relationship between the abundance of prey and the density of the carnivores that depend on them, a cornerstone of predator ecology. Across species and systems, predato…

A survey of the minimum prey abundance large cats need to maintain viable populations and why prey depletion is a leading cause of felid decline. Because predator density scales with prey biomass, the…

Many structurally intact Asian forests now hold few or no tigers because their prey has been hunted out, a phenomenon known as the empty forest syndrome. This overview synthesizes evidence that unsust…

Many forests across tiger range remain structurally intact yet hold few or no tigers because their large prey have been hunted out, a condition often called the empty forest syndrome. This overview su…

An overview of how the loss of large ungulate prey to human hunting hollows out tiger habitat even where forest cover remains, producing empty forests that cannot support tigers. Because tigers requir…

This overview synthesises evidence that depletion of wild ungulate prey, through poaching, the bushmeat trade, and habitat loss, drives tigers toward livestock and, in extreme cases, people. It review…

Sundarbans tigers rely on prey such as spotted deer (chital) and wild boar, whose abundance depends on mangrove forest condition and freshwater availability. This overview surveys how climate-driven c…

An overview of the behavioral defenses ungulates and other prey deploy against felid predators, from vigilance scanning to alarm signaling and habitat avoidance. Because cats are stealthy ambush hunte…

Protected areas are the cornerstone of felid conservation, but their effectiveness at stopping habitat loss varies and is tested by mounting land-use and climate pressure. This overview surveys method…

Individual reserves are rarely large enough to sustain wide-ranging cats on their own, so conservation increasingly relies on networks of protected areas linked by corridors, and this overview examine…