🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Understanding why people poach, and what deters them, is essential to designing effective anti-poaching strategy. This overview surveys research on the economics and behavior of poaching, examining th…

Modern cats are divided into eight monophyletic lineages: the Panthera lineage (lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars, snow leopards, clouded leopards), the bay cat lineage, the caracal lineage, the ocelot…

Cats span a remarkable size range, from the kilogram-scale rusty-spotted and black-footed cats to tigers weighing hundreds of kilograms, and body size has evolved repeatedly in different directions. T…

Advances in sequencing, noninvasive sampling, and analysis are transforming how genetics informs cat conservation. This overview surveys emerging directions, including reference-quality genomes for ev…

Cats are obligate carnivores, physiologically dependent on a meat diet, and comparative genomics has uncovered the molecular underpinnings of this specialization. This overview surveys findings that f…

The landscape-of-fear concept holds that perceived predation risk, including risk from humans acting as super-predators, reshapes where and how animals move, feed and rest. This overview synthesises e…

The modern cats diversified into roughly forty species within the last eleven million years, a relatively rapid radiation that left a tangled phylogeny marked by short internal branches. This overview…

Cities create urban heat islands and altered microclimates that can impose thermal stress on felids, influencing their use of shade, water and cool refuges, especially as climate warming intensifies.…

Wildlife tourism, much of it built around charismatic big cats, generates revenue that can fund conservation and provide community benefits, but the distribution of those benefits strongly affects con…

Demand for big cat parts in traditional medicine, particularly bones believed to treat ailments, is a primary driver of poaching and trade affecting tigers, leopards, lions, and others. This overview…

Many large carnivore landscapes span international borders, prompting the creation of transboundary protected areas, sometimes called peace parks, that link reserves across countries into larger conse…

When anthropogenic food subsidises predators, the effects ripple through food webs, altering predation pressure on native prey and interactions among carnivores. This overview synthesises research on…

Because garbage and organic waste feed both carnivores directly and the rodent and dog populations they prey upon, waste management is a powerful indirect lever on urban carnivore abundance and confli…

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…

Genetic tools are increasingly used to combat the illegal trade in cats and their parts, from tiger bones and skins to confiscated live animals. This overview surveys how forensic genetics assigns sei…

This sweeping review synthesized the global status of the world's largest carnivores, including big cats such as tigers, lions, and leopards, and documented that most are declining and have lost large…

Ripple WJ, Estes JA, Beschta RL, et al. · Science · 2014

This comprehensive edited volume brought together leading researchers to synthesize the science of wild cats, spanning felid evolution, behavior, ecology, and the full breadth of conservation challeng…

Macdonald DW, Loveridge AJ (eds) · 2010

This landmark study reconstructed the evolutionary tree of all 37 living cat species using mitochondrial and nuclear DNA sequences combined with molecular dating calibrated by the fossil record. The a…

Warren E. Johnson, Eduardo Eizirik, Jill Pecon-Slattery, William J. Murphy, Agostinho Antunes, Emma Teeling, Stephen J. O'Brien · Science · 2006

This landmark global meta-analysis showed that mammals across the world, including many carnivores, increase their nocturnal activity in response to human disturbance, becoming more active at night ev…

Gaynor KM, Hojnowski CE, Carter NH, Brashares JS · Science · 2018

This edited volume assembled the foundational synthesis of urban carnivore biology, bringing together chapters on species from coyotes and foxes to felids, and on cross-cutting themes of disease, conf…

Gehrt SD, Riley SPD, Cypher BL · Johns Hopkins University Press · 2010