🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Surveying owners of over two thousand pet cats, researchers used questionnaire ratings to identify five reliable personality dimensions, dubbed the Feline Five: neuroticism, extraversion, dominance, i…

Carla Litchfield and colleagues · PLOS ONE · 2017

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 range-wide assessment compiled distribution and population data to show that cheetahs have been lost from the large majority of their historical range and now number only a few thousand adults, w…

Durant SM, Mitchell N, Groom R, et al. · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2017

This landmark study reconstructed the evolutionary tree of all 37 living cat species using mitochondrial and nuclear DNA sequences combined with molecular dating calibrated by the fossil record. The a…

Warren E. Johnson, Eduardo Eizirik, Jill Pecon-Slattery, William J. Murphy, Agostinho Antunes, Emma Teeling, Stephen J. O'Brien · Science · 2006

This landmark study used molecular genetics to reconstruct the evolutionary history of the cat family, resolving the relationships among all living felids and the timing of their diversification. The…

Warren E. Johnson, Eduardo Eizirik, Jill Pecon-Slattery, William J. Murphy, Agostinho Antunes, Emma Teeling, Stephen J. O'Brien · Science · 2006

This landmark genetic study reconstructed the evolutionary history of the cat family, using molecular data across all living felid species to resolve the major lineages and their divergence times. It…

Johnson WE, Eizirik E, Pecon-Slattery J, Murphy WJ, Antunes A, Teeling E, OBrien SJ · Science · 2006

This regional survey systematically searched protected areas across West Africa to determine where lions still survived, and found the situation far worse than expected. Lions had vanished from most o…

Henschel P, Coad L, Burton C, et al. · PLoS ONE · 2014

Patterson's book synthesises field biology, museum forensics, and historical records surrounding the 1898 Tsavo man-eating lions that halted railway construction over the Tsavo River. It examines comp…

Bruce D. Patterson · 2004

This book by a leading felid morphologist examines how cat anatomy, ecology, and evolution inform their classification, and it predates but anticipates the integrative approach later formalized by the…

Kitchener AC · Comstock/Cornell University Press · 1991

This study traced the ancestry of the domestic cat by sampling wildcats across their range and comparing mitochondrial DNA from hundreds of wild and domestic individuals. The authors showed that all d…

Carlos A. Driscoll, Marilyn Menotti-Raymond, Stephen J. O'Brien, et al. · Science · 2007

Driscoll and colleagues sampled mitochondrial DNA from nearly 1,000 wildcats and domestic cats across Europe, Asia and Africa to resolve where the house cat came from. The analysis showed all domestic…

Carlos A. Driscoll, Marilyn Menotti-Raymond, Alfred L. Roca, et al. · Science · 2007

This landmark study sampled wildcats across Europe, Africa, and Asia and used mitochondrial DNA and microsatellites to define the structure of the Felis silvestris complex and pinpoint the ancestry of…

Driscoll CA, Menotti-Raymond M, Roca AL, et al. · Science · 2007

This study sequenced ancient DNA from cat remains spanning roughly ten thousand years across Europe, the Near East, and Africa to trace how cats spread alongside humans. The authors identified two maj…

Claudio Ottoni, Eva-Maria Geigl, Thierry Grange, et al. · Nature Ecology & Evolution · 2017

Schaller's monograph is the foundational field study of lion ecology and one of the most thorough predator-prey investigations ever conducted. Over years in the Serengeti, he documented lion social st…

Schaller, G.B. · University of Chicago Press · 1972

This monograph is a foundational field study of lion biology based on years of direct observation in the Serengeti ecosystem. While famous for its analysis of predation, it also provides detailed acco…

Schaller GB · University of Chicago Press · 1972

George Schaller spent three years observing lions on the Serengeti plains and woodlands, producing the first comprehensive natural history of the species. By following recognizable individuals he docu…

Schaller, G. B. · University of Chicago Press · 1972

This foundational monograph reported years of direct observation of lion prides in the Serengeti, establishing baseline knowledge of pride structure, cooperative hunting, territorial behaviour, scaven…

George Schaller · 1972

This study used satellite imagery and human population data to map how much of Africa's savannah remains suitable for lions, viewing the continent through the needs of a wide-ranging predator. The aut…

Riggio J, Jacobson A, Dollar L, et al. · Biodiversity and Conservation · 2013

This widely read popular-science synthesis distilled the molecular findings on wildcat systematics and cat domestication for a general audience. Written by researchers central to the foundational wild…

Driscoll CA, Clutton-Brock J, Kitchener AC, O'Brien SJ · Scientific American · 2009

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

Lipinski and colleagues used a panel of genetic markers to characterize the population structure of cat breeds and worldwide random-bred cats. They found that most modern cat breeds are relatively rec…

Monika J. Lipinski, Lutz Froenicke, Kathryn C. Baysac, et al. · Genomics · 2008

This landmark study investigated why cats rub and roll on silver vine and catnip, and uncovered a surprising functional benefit beyond apparent pleasure. The researchers identified nepetalactol as a p…

Reiko Uenoyama, Tamako Miyazaki, Jane L. Hurst, Robert J. Beynon, et al. · Science Advances · 2021

This landmark study used protein electrophoresis across dozens of allozyme loci to show that the cheetah carries almost no detectable genetic variation, a pattern unprecedented among mammals at the ti…

O'Brien SJ, Wildt DE, Goldman D, Merril CR, Bush M · Science · 1983

This influential study revealed that cheetahs possess strikingly low genetic variation, demonstrated by extreme similarity at protein-coding loci and, in later related work, acceptance of reciprocal s…

O'Brien SJ, Wildt DE, Goldman D, Merril CR, Bush M · Science · 1983

This influential paper argued that the modern cheetah lineage had deep roots in the New World, drawing attention to the extinct North American cheetah-like cats now placed in the genus Miracinonyx. Ad…

Daniel B. Adams · Science · 1979

Holling's classic paper dissected predation into its component processes and introduced the functional response, the relationship between prey density and the number of prey killed per predator. He de…

Holling, C.S. · The Canadian Entomologist · 1959

This study characterized the health and genetic status of the Florida panther, a tiny, isolated puma population reduced to a few dozen animals. The authors documented inbreeding-associated problems in…

M. E. Roelke, J. S. Martenson, S. J. O’Brien · Current Biology · 1993

McComb and colleagues identified a special soliciting purr that cats use to extract food and care from their owners. Comparing purrs recorded when cats sought food with ordinary contentment purrs, the…

Karen McComb, Anna M. Taylor, Christian Wilson, Benjamin D. Charlton · Current Biology · 2009

This influential synthesis explored why carnivores vary so much in sociality, from solitary cats to group-living species, linking social organization to the distribution of food in space and time. It…

Macdonald, D. W. · Nature · 1983

Brown, Laundre and Gurung laid the theoretical foundation for fear-driven predator-prey ecology, integrating optimal foraging theory and game theory to show how prey trade food intake against safety.…

Brown, J.S., Laundre, J.W. & Gurung, M. · Journal of Mammalogy · 1999