🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Faced with range-wide decline, tiger conservation has emphasized protecting a network of source sites, well-managed core areas capable of producing surplus animals to repopulate surrounding land. This…

Monitoring the illegal trade in tiger parts relies heavily on analyzing seizures of skins, bones, claws, and other products intercepted by authorities. This overview surveys research, much of it compi…

Where tigers and people share landscapes, conflict over livestock and occasional attacks on humans shapes both tiger survival and local attitudes. This overview synthesizes studies on the circumstance…

The tall-grass and riverine forest mosaic of the Terai along the Himalayan foothills supports some of the highest tiger densities on Earth. This overview reviews how the exceptional productivity of th…

Tigers occasionally range to the edges of villages, towns and agricultural land bordering reserves such as the Sundarbans and central Indian parks, creating acute conflict in densely populated South A…

The Sundarbans, a vast tidal mangrove forest straddling India and Bangladesh, hosts a tiger population unlike any other. This overview reviews how these tigers swim between islands, drink brackish or…

In many Asian forests tigers share the landscape with leopards and packs of dholes, the Asiatic wild dog, forming a guild that partitions prey and space. This overview synthesizes research on how thes…

The Sundarbans straddle India and Bangladesh, so safeguarding its tigers against climate change requires coordinated cross-border action. This overview surveys how the two nations monitor and manage t…

An overview of how large cats can structure ecosystems from the top down, with effects rippling through herbivores to vegetation and beyond. By killing and frightening herbivores, apex felids such as…

Vaccinating endangered wild felids against canine distemper is fraught with trade-offs. This overview surveys the options: modified-live vaccines, which risk vaccine-induced disease in non-target spec…

Faecal glucocorticoid metabolite monitoring is the workhorse of felid stress research because it avoids the confound of capture and restraint, but it requires species-specific validation to be meaning…

This overview synthesises studies analysing who is attacked by tigers and leopards and under what circumstances, drawing on incident records across South Asia. It reviews patterns by age, sex, occupat…

This overview reviews the contested practice of voluntarily relocating villages out of tiger-reserve cores in India to reduce human-tiger conflict and create inviolate breeding habitat. It synthesises…

Tigers use a repertoire of calls, including powerful roars rich in low-frequency and infrasonic energy that carry far through forest. This overview synthesizes research on how these vocalizations adve…

Unlike most cats, tigers readily enter water and swim, and providing pools is considered an important welfare and enrichment feature for the species. This overview surveys evidence and practice around…

Managers of reserves holding lions, tigers, and other cats sometimes provision artificial water to buffer wildlife against drought, a practice with contested ecological consequences. This overview sur…

Private ownership of tigers, lions and other big cats, historically widespread in some countries, raises acute welfare and public-safety concerns. This overview surveys the issues: inadequate enclosur…

Cub-petting attractions, where the public pays to handle tiger, lion and other big-cat cubs, depend on a continuous supply of young animals within a narrow handleable age window. This overview surveys…

Beyond white tigers, other captive felid colour variants, white lions and the patterned king cheetah, raise similar questions about breeding for appearance. This overview surveys the genetics of these…

Although domestic cats have vertical-slit pupils, large felids such as lions and tigers have round pupils, a contrast that has attracted scientific attention. This overview surveys the explanation tie…

This pioneering study quantified how projected sea-level rise threatens the tigers of the Sundarbans, the world's largest mangrove forest and home to a unique population of Bengal tigers. Using elevat…

Loucks, C., Barber-Meyer, S., Hossain, M.A.A., Barlow, A., Chowdhury, R.M. · Climatic Change · 2010

This widely cited review synthesized the theory and practice of species distribution models (SDMs), the statistical tools that relate species occurrence to environmental predictors to map current and…

Elith, J., Leathwick, J.R. · Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics · 2009

This influential review synthesized the global status of the largest carnivores, including big cats such as lions, tigers, leopards, and jaguars, documenting widespread range contraction and populatio…

Ripple, W.J., Estes, J.A., Beschta, R.L., Wilmers, C.C., Ritchie, E.G., Hebblewhite, M., et al. · Science · 2014

Mason's review synthesised decades of work on stereotypic behaviour across captive species, defining stereotypies as repetitive, invariant movements with no obvious goal. She argued they arise from fr…

Mason GJ · Animal Behaviour · 1991

The big cats of the genus Panthera proved historically difficult to resolve because of rapid speciation and conflicting gene trees. This study assembled a large multilocus supermatrix and applied both…

Brian W. Davis, Gang Li, William J. Murphy · Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution · 2010

Relationships among the big cats long resisted resolution because of short internal branches and conflicting markers. This study assembled a large multi-gene dataset and applied both concatenated supe…

Davis BW, Li G, Murphy WJ · Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution · 2010

This synthesis introduced the concept of Tiger Conservation Landscapes, mapping where tigers could still be found across Asia and classifying these areas by their potential to support recovery. The au…

Dinerstein E, Loucks C, Wikramanayake E, et al. · BioScience · 2007

This study resolved the long-standing mystery of the white tiger by mapping the trait in a captive pedigree and identifying a single amino-acid change in the pigment transporter gene SLC45A2. The vari…

Xiao Xu, Shu-Jin Luo, et al. · Current Biology · 2013

This study produced the first reference genome of the tiger, sequenced from an Amur tiger, and compared it with newly generated lion and snow leopard genome data. The authors identified genetic signat…

Yun Sung Cho, Jong Bhak, et al. · Nature Communications · 2013

Lyons, Young and Deag surveyed multiple felid species across enclosures differing in size, complexity and feeding routine to identify what most affects behaviour. They found that enclosure usage and a…

Lyons J, Young RJ, Deag JM · Zoo Biology · 1997