🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

This overview synthesises studies identifying which landscape and management variables predict where big cats kill livestock, a recurring quantitative question across conflict research. It reviews con…

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…

Leopards are among the most frequently camera-trapped big cats, their rosette patterns enabling robust individual identification across an enormous range spanning Africa and Asia. This overview survey…

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…

Camera-trap surveys aimed at tigers and leopards routinely capture a hidden bycatch of small Asian cats, marbled cat, leopard cat, golden cat, jungle cat, and others, providing rare records of poorly…

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…

A survey of how leopards, as widespread mid-to-large felids, suppress smaller carnivores through killing, kleptoparasitism and fear. Across Africa and Asia leopards kill and displace jackals, caracals…

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…

Before genome sequencing became routine, microsatellites, short tandem repeats scattered through the genome, were the workhorse markers of felid population and forensic genetics. This overview surveys…

Mitochondrial DNA, with its maternal inheritance, high copy number, and relatively fast evolution, was central to the first molecular phylogenies and phylogeographic studies of cats. This overview sur…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Where several large cats share a landscape, they coexist by partitioning resources along axes of prey size, habitat, and activity. This overview synthesizes research across continents showing how tige…

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…

Because most wild cats are elusive and difficult to capture, conservation geneticists increasingly rely on noninvasive samples such as scat, hair, and shed cells to obtain DNA without handling the ani…

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…

Beyond tigers, Southeast Asia's oil palm expansion affects a guild of smaller cats, including leopard cat, clouded leopard, marbled cat, and flat-headed cat, with widely varying tolerance of plantatio…

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…

Many protected areas exist on maps but lack the staff, funding, and enforcement to deliver real protection, a phenomenon known as paper parks. This overview surveys research using tools such as the Ma…

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…