🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Animals do not move at random or solely in response to immediate cues; they remember productive sites, dangerous areas, and routes, and this overview examines how memory shapes felid movement. Evidenc…

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 a cat's metabolic needs and prey size determine how often it must kill. Larger felids require more total energy but extract it from larger carcasses, so kill frequency scales with the…

High-throughput sequencing has opened a new era of virus discovery, allowing researchers to catalog the viromes of wild felids without prior knowledge of which pathogens to seek. This overview surveys…

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…

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…

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…

Natal dispersal, the movement of young animals from their birth area to where they will breed, varies in distance and sex bias across cat species. This overview compiles comparative data on dispersal…

This overview synthesises evidence linking the depletion of natural prey, peccaries, deer, capybara, guanaco, to increased jaguar and puma depredation on livestock across the Americas. It reviews stud…

Careful necropsy and pathological examination underpin much of what is known about causes of death and disease in wild felids. This overview surveys the role of standardized post-mortem investigation…

Net squared displacement, the squared straight-line distance from a starting point over time, provides a simple but powerful way to classify whole-trajectory movement strategies. This overview describ…

Where pumas and jaguars overlap in the Neotropics, the puma often shifts its niche in response to the larger cat. This overview synthesizes research showing that in sympatry pumas tend to take smaller…

This overview synthesises evidence on nonlethal tools, secure night penning, fladry (flagged lines), turbo-fladry, motion-activated lights and sound, and guard animals, used to protect livestock from…

Capturing and sampling wild felids is costly and risky, so researchers increasingly turn to non-invasive methods, especially analysis of feces, to detect pathogens and parasites. This overview surveys…

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…

An overview of how the prey a cat takes changes as it grows, learns to hunt and gains the size and strength to subdue larger prey. Young felids first depend on prey provided by their mother, then prac…

Overall dynamic body acceleration, or ODBA, sums the dynamic component of acceleration across three axes to provide a low-cost proxy for an animal's rate of energy use. This overview explains the rati…

This overview synthesises studies across Latin America comparing ranchers' perceived livestock losses to jaguars and pumas with verified depredation, a recurring theme in big-cat conflict. It reviews…

Range expansions often begin with a handful of pioneering individuals making improbable journeys into vacant habitat, and this overview examines how movement science documents these events for cats. W…

Population viability analysis integrates demography, genetics and connectivity to project the persistence of small felid populations isolated by urbanisation, guiding conservation triage and intervent…

Population viability analysis estimates extinction risk by simulating a population's demography forward in time, and it is increasingly run under climate scenarios for threatened cats. This overview s…

After fire, vegetation regrows through successional stages that determine when and how prey and predators return. This overview surveys how post-fire recovery shapes habitat quality for cats, the flus…

A survey of how felids exploit the seasonal pulse of newborn ungulates, a period of high vulnerability that can dominate annual recruitment losses. During calving and fawning seasons, abundant, hidden…

This overview reviews the use of statistical and machine-learning models to build predictive risk maps that forecast where big-cat conflict is likely, rather than only describing past incidents. It sy…

Managers use prescribed fire to shape vegetation, reduce fuel loads, and create habitat conditions that benefit wildlife, including the prey of cats. This overview surveys how planned burning maintain…

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…

A survey of how big cats process and consume their kills, and why handling time matters for kill-rate estimation and competition. Larger carcasses take longer to consume and force predators to remain…

A felid’s diet largely determines its parasite burden, as many worms and protozoa are acquired by eating infected prey. This overview surveys how prey-mediated transmission shapes the parasitic fauna…