🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

This overview examines research on pumas persisting in and around the urbanised landscapes of southern California, epitomised by P-22, the mountain lion that lived for years in Los Angeles's Griffith…

For pumas living in and around Los Angeles, collisions with vehicles on freeways and surface roads are among the most frequent documented causes of death. This overview synthesises telemetry-based mor…

Wild felids living near cities are exposed to pathogens including feline immunodeficiency virus, feline leukemia virus and others, sometimes shared with domestic cats, raising conservation and One Hea…

This overview reviews husbandry interventions promoted to reduce jaguar and puma depredation on cattle in the Venezuelan llanos and elsewhere, including the use of water buffalo, which form defensive…

Water sources and riparian corridors are disproportionately important to felids in human-dominated landscapes, providing drinking water, prey, cover and movement routes through otherwise hostile devel…

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…

Wildlife overpasses and underpasses are increasingly used to reconnect carnivore populations split by highways, with high-profile projects designed for pumas. This overview surveys the evidence that c…

This study used fine-scale GPS and accelerometer data from pumas in the Santa Cruz Mountains to show that cougars respond to human development at multiple spatial scales, avoiding developed areas in w…

Wilmers CC, Wang Y, Nickel B, Houghtaling P, Shakeri Y, Allen ML, Kermish-Wells J, Yovovich V, Williams T · PLoS ONE · 2013

This comprehensive study screened thousands of samples from many felid species plus hyenas for feline immunodeficiency virus and sequenced isolates to map viral diversity. The authors confirmed that F…

J. L. Troyer, J. Pecon-Slattery, M. E. Roelke, et al. · Journal of Virology · 2005

Vickers and colleagues followed GPS-collared pumas across the rapidly urbanizing landscape of southern California to quantify survival and identify the causes of death driving population decline. They…

T. Winston Vickers, Jessica N. Sanchez, Christine K. Johnson, Scott A. Morrison, Randy Botta, Trish Smith, Brian S. Cohen, Patrick R. Huber, Holly B. Ernest, Walter M. Boyce · PLOS ONE · 2015

Drawing on years of telemetry across southern California, this study quantified survival rates and causes of death for pumas living in landscapes increasingly fragmented by roads and development. Vehi…

Vickers TW, Sanchez JN, Johnson CK, Morrison SA, Botta R, Smith T, Cohen BS, Huber PR, Ernest HB, Boyce WM · PLoS ONE · 2015

This review argued that the proliferation of animal-borne sensors, including accelerometers, magnetometers, and physiological loggers, had ushered in a golden age in which ecologists could measure not…

Christopher C. Wilmers, Barry Nickel, Caleb M. Bryce, Justine A. Smith, Rachel E. Wheat, Yiwei Wang · Ecology · 2015

A decade after naming the concept, Laundre, Hernandez and Ripple reviewed how the landscape of fear had matured into a framework for understanding nonconsumptive predator effects. They synthesized evi…

Laundre, J.W., Hernandez, L. & Ripple, W.J. · The Open Ecology Journal · 2010

Prugh and colleagues synthesized global evidence that the worldwide decline of apex predators has triggered widespread increases in mid-sized carnivores, with far-reaching ecological and economic cons…

Prugh, L.R., Stoner, C.J., Epps, C.W., Bean, W.T. et al. · BioScience · 2009

Studying pumas around human development in California, this research found that cougars exposed to greater human presence killed more prey, apparently to compensate for abandoning kills and spending l…

Smith JA, Wang Y, Wilmers CC · Proceedings of the Royal Society B · 2015

This influential synthesis argued that the loss of large apex consumers, including big cats and other top predators, is among humanity's most pervasive impacts on nature. Drawing on examples across ec…

Estes, J. A., Terborgh, J., Brashares, J. S., et al. · Science · 2011

Estes and a large group of coauthors synthesized evidence that the loss of apex consumers, including big cats, is among humanity's most pervasive influences on nature. The review marshaled cases acros…

Estes, J.A., Terborgh, J., Brashares, J.S. et al. · Science · 2011

Wilmers and colleagues showed that reintroduced wolves in Yellowstone act as ecosystem benefactors by providing a steady, more evenly distributed supply of carrion to scavengers, buffering them agains…

Wilmers, C.C., Crabtree, R.L., Smith, D.W., Murphy, K.M. & Getz, W.M. · Journal of Animal Ecology · 2003

Negroes and colleagues estimated puma density in the central Brazilian Cerrado using camera traps, confronting the difficulty of individually identifying pumas from their relatively unmarked coats by…

Nuno Negroes, Peter Sarmento, Joao Cruz, Catarina Eira, Erica Revilla, et al. · Journal of Wildlife Management · 2010

This paper introduced and named the landscape of fear concept, arguing that prey perceive their habitat as a spatially varying map of predation risk that shapes where and how they forage. Using elk an…

Laundre, J.W., Hernandez, L. & Altendorf, K.B. · Canadian Journal of Zoology · 2001

This broad serosurvey screened many nondomestic felid species across the world for antibodies to feline immunodeficiency virus-like lentiviruses. The authors found widespread seroprevalence in free-ra…

J. D. Olmsted, A. Barr, R. A. Hess, et al. · Journal of Virology · 1992