🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

When confronted with an ambiguous, potentially frightening object such as a noisy fan, do cats look to their owner for guidance? In this experiment owners reacted to the object with either a positive…

Isabella Merola and colleagues · Animal Cognition · 2015

Morgan and Tromborg comprehensively reviewed the environmental factors that stress captive animals, cataloguing sound, light, odour, temperature, substrate, restraint, human presence, predictability a…

Morgan KN, Tromborg CT · Applied Animal Behaviour Science · 2007

This comprehensive book by Royle, Chandler, Sollmann, and Gardner is the definitive monograph on spatially explicit capture-recapture, presenting the theory, models, and computational methods that und…

J. Andrew Royle, Richard B. Chandler, Rahel Sollmann, Beth Gardner · Academic Press · 2014

Using GPS telemetry on jaguars in the seasonally flooded Pantanal of Brazil, this study quantified home ranges, movements, and the degree of spatial overlap among individuals. It revealed that jaguar…

Cavalcanti, S. M. C., Gese, E. M. · Journal of Mammalogy · 2009

Borchers and Efford provided the rigorous likelihood-based foundation for spatially explicit capture-recapture, formalizing how to estimate density when detectors such as camera stations have fixed lo…

David L. Borchers, Murray G. Efford · Biometrics · 2008

Chandler and Royle developed spatial count models that estimate density from spatially correlated counts of unmarked individuals, extending spatially explicit capture-recapture to populations where no…

Richard B. Chandler, J. Andrew Royle · Annals of Applied Statistics · 2013

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 study identified the gene responsible for the dramatic blotched coat of the king cheetah and the related variation between mackerel and blotched tabby patterns in domestic cats. The authors mappe…

Christopher B. Kaelin, Gregory S. Barsh, et al. · Science · 2012

Kaelin and colleagues uncovered the genetic and developmental basis of the tabby coat patterns that adorn domestic cats and their wild relatives. They identified the gene Taqpep, encoding a protease,…

Christopher B. Kaelin, Xiao Xu, Lewis Z. Hong, et al. · Science · 2012

Otis, Burnham, White, and Anderson produced the foundational monograph on closed-population capture-recapture, defining the suite of models that allow for variation in capture probability over time, b…

David L. Otis, Kenneth P. Burnham, Gary C. White, David R. Anderson · Wildlife Monographs · 1978

This sweeping review synthesized the global status of the world's largest carnivores, including big cats such as tigers, lions, and leopards, and documented that most are declining and have lost large…

Ripple WJ, Estes JA, Beschta RL, et al. · Science · 2014

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

Kessler and Turner used the Cat-Stress-Score, a validated behavioural scale they helped popularise, to assess domestic cats in boarding catteries kept alone, in pairs or in groups. Most cats showed el…

Kessler MR, Turner DC · Animal Welfare · 1997

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

Using finite element analysis, the authors built a high-resolution digital model of a Smilodon fatalis skull and compared its mechanical performance against a modern lion. The simulations showed that…

Colin R. McHenry, Stephen Wroe, Philip D. Clausen, Karen Moreno, Eleanor Cunningham · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2007

This study built a high-resolution finite-element model of the skull of the sabertoothed cat Smilodon fatalis and compared its mechanical behaviour with that of a modern lion. The simulations indicate…

McHenry, C.R.; Wroe, S.; Clausen, P.D.; Moreno, K.; Cunningham, E. · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2007

Kruuk documented and analyzed cases where carnivores kill far more prey than they can consume, challenging the assumption that predators only take what they need. Drawing on spotted hyena and other ca…

Kruuk, H. · Journal of Zoology · 1972

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 experimental study assessed which domesticated species could be infected by SARS-CoV-2. The authors found that cats were highly susceptible: inoculated cats replicated the virus efficiently in th…

J. Shi, Z. Wen, G. Zhong, et al. · Science · 2020

Although focused on small-mammal populations, this paper is widely credited with formalizing the minimum convex polygon as a measure of an animal's home range, the smallest convex shape enclosing all…

Carl O. Mohr · American Midland Naturalist · 1947

This influential review synthesized how rapidly improving tracking technology, from GPS tags to accelerometers and global data repositories, had turned animal movement into a powerful sensor network f…

Roland Kays, Margaret C. Crofoot, Walter Jetz, Martin Wikelski · Science · 2015

Litchfield and colleagues surveyed owners of many pet cats to characterise feline personality, identifying five broad factors they termed the 'Feline Five': neuroticism, extraversion, dominance, impul…

Litchfield CA, Quinton G, Tindle H, Chiera B, Kikillus KH, Roetman P · PLoS ONE · 2017

This influential book provides a comprehensive illustrated survey of the cat family and its extinct members, combining scientific synthesis with detailed reconstructions of fossil felids and their sab…

Alan Turner, Mauricio Anton · Columbia University Press · 1997

This comprehensive edited volume brought together leading researchers to synthesize the science of wild cats, spanning felid evolution, behavior, ecology, and the full breadth of conservation challeng…

Macdonald DW, Loveridge AJ (eds) · 2010

This study analyzed lion population structure and history using both the lions' own genetic markers and the genomes of feline immunodeficiency virus strains that infect them. By treating the virus as…

Agostinho Antunes, Stephen J. O'Brien, et al. · PLoS Genetics · 2008

This study combined genomes from modern lions across Africa and India with ancient DNA from extinct cave lions to reconstruct the deep history of the lion lineage. The authors estimated that cave lion…

Marc de Manuel, Ross Barnett, Tomas Marques-Bonet, et al. · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2020

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