🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Projecting a species into the future requires transferring a model into climate conditions that may not exist anywhere today, raising the risk of unreliable extrapolation. This overview surveys the pr…

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…

The cat's hunting behaviour is organised as a sequence of partly independent modules: searching, stalking, chasing, pouncing, grabbing, killing, and consuming. This overview surveys research on how th…

Estimating when cat lineages diverged requires calibrating molecular substitution rates against the fossil record, a process fraught with uncertainty when fossils are sparse. This overview surveys how…

This overview examines how molecular clocks, calibrated with fossils, have been used to estimate when the living big cats diverged from one another. Genetic studies place the origin of the Panthera li…

Molecular tools have revolutionized the study of how pathogens spread among carnivores, including felids, by reading the genetic signatures of viruses and parasites. This overview surveys the use of m…

Determining the sex of individuals from non-invasively collected samples such as feces or hair supports studies of population structure, dispersal, and reproduction. This overview surveys molecular se…

Estimating when cat lineages split underpins much of felid systematics and biogeography. This overview explains how molecular clocks, calibrated with fossils, convert genetic distances into divergence…

Molnupiravir, a nucleoside analog that induces lethal mutagenesis in RNA viruses, emerged as an oral option for FIP, particularly as a rescue therapy for cats that relapse or respond poorly to GS-4415…

Tracking whether Iberian lynx recovery is keeping pace with environmental change requires sustained, standardized monitoring of cats, rabbits, and habitat. This overview surveys the census methods, ca…

Demonstrating that a wildlife crossing works requires monitoring, and this overview surveys the methods used to document which animals use structures and how often. Remote cameras provide continuous,…

Effective population size, the genetically relevant number of breeders, is a key indicator of a fragmented population's resilience. This overview surveys how researchers estimate it for cats from noni…

Climate-adaptation strategies, refugia protection, corridors, assisted colonization, need monitoring to know whether they work over the long timescales of climate change. This overview surveys the ind…

Whether the snow leopard should be split into subspecies is an active debate. This overview contrasts the traditional treatment of the snow leopard as a monotypic species with a 2017 proposal recogniz…

The history of cat classification is largely a story of tension and eventual integration between morphological and molecular approaches. This overview compares the two: morphology, including skull mor…

Cats are exquisitely sensitive to movement, and this overview reviews the visual mechanisms behind this and their predatory significance. The feline visual system emphasises detecting and tracking mot…

In the rugged mountains of the Middle East and Central Asia, leopards persist as rare, threatened populations adapted to arid, rocky terrain. This overview synthesizes what is known about the Arabian…

Bovine tuberculosis in African wildlife is sustained by a community of hosts, with African buffalo as the principal maintenance population and lions, kudu, warthogs and others variously infected. This…

Canine distemper in the Serengeti circulates not in a single species but across a community of carnivores including domestic dogs, jackals, hyenas and big cats. This overview examines research untangl…

Leopards are solitary and territorial, yet females may mate with more than one male, and the resulting paternity patterns shed light on the species' mating system. This overview surveys observations o…

Community occupancy models extend single-species occupancy to many species simultaneously, sharing information across the assemblage to improve estimates for rarely detected species and to characteriz…

A vertical-slit pupil interacts with the lens in ways that may help correct for chromatic aberration, the tendency of a lens to focus different colors at slightly different distances. This overview su…

Cat-human communication combines vocal, visual, and tactile channels, and research increasingly examines how these integrate. This overview surveys work on how cats coordinate meows, purrs, body postu…

Genetic studies have shown that cheetah litters frequently contain cubs fathered by different males, reflecting female mating with multiple partners. This overview surveys evidence for multiple patern…

Because female cats may mate with several males during a single estrus, individual litters can contain offspring sired by more than one father. This overview surveys evidence for multiple paternity ac…

This overview synthesises research on the social and ecological factors influencing herder attitudes toward snow leopards and wolves across the trans-Himalaya, emphasising that tolerance is shaped at…

Feline predation draws on vision, hearing, smell, and touch in a coordinated sequence, and the brain integrates these channels to guide the hunt. This overview surveys multisensory integration in hunt…

Natural history museum collections preserve specimens spanning centuries, providing a genetic archive of felid populations as they existed before recent declines. This overview surveys how museum geno…

The rate at which new mutations arise sets the pace of evolution and the recovery of diversity in small populations, yet it has been difficult to measure directly in cats. This overview surveys effort…