🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

This influential study used feline immunodeficiency virus as a fast-evolving genetic marker to reconstruct the population history of its puma hosts in the American West. Because the virus mutates far…

R. Biek, A. J. Drummond, M. Poss · Science · 2006

This pioneering study in the Idaho Primitive Area provided the first rigorous picture of mountain lion predation on wild ungulates, based on years of tracking pumas in snow and examining kills. It doc…

Hornocker, M. G. · Wildlife Monographs · 1970

Hornocker combined winter snow-tracking with radio-telemetry to quantify how cougars hunt mule deer and elk in central Idaho. By relocating collared lions and back-tracking to their kills, he estimate…

Maurice G. Hornocker · Wildlife Monographs · 1970

Hornocker's pioneering radio-telemetry study of cougars in central Idaho was among the first to quantify how a solitary felid affects its ungulate prey. By tracking marked lions through winters and re…

Hornocker, M.G. · Wildlife Monographs · 1970

Beier compiled and analysed records of cougar (puma) attacks on people across the United States and Canada through the twentieth century, providing the first systematic quantification of a rare but fe…

Paul Beier · Wildlife Society Bulletin · 1991

Knopff and colleagues used GPS location clusters to investigate cougar kills in Alberta, dramatically improving on snow-tracking by detecting small and warm-season prey often missed before. They estim…

Knopff, K.H., Knopff, A.A., Kortello, A. & Boyce, M.S. · Journal of Wildlife Management · 2010

Logan and Sweanor's monograph reports a decade-long study of pumas in New Mexico's San Andres Mountains, one of the most thorough investigations of cougar population and predation ecology. It document…

Logan, K.A. & Sweanor, L.L. · Island Press · 2001

This early conservation-planning study modelled how much habitat and what corridor configuration cougars need to persist in fragmenting southern California landscapes. By analysing demography and move…

Beier P · Conservation Biology · 1993

Beier combined population modeling with movement and habitat data to estimate how much habitat a cougar population needs to persist and how corridors connecting habitat patches reduce extinction risk.…

Paul Beier · Conservation Biology · 1993

Beier radio-tracked juvenile cougars dispersing through the fragmented Santa Ana Mountains of southern California, documenting how young animals leave their natal areas and search for territory amid e…

Paul Beier · The Journal of Wildlife Management · 1995

This radio-telemetry study tracked young cougars dispersing through the developing landscape of southern California, documenting the routes they used, the barriers they faced and the mortality they su…

Beier P · Journal of Wildlife Management · 1995

Focusing on a well-studied cougar population, this study characterized the prevalence, genetic diversity and evolutionary dynamics of endemic feline immunodeficiency virus in wild pumas. By sampling i…

R. Biek, T. K. Ruth, K. M. Murphy, et al. · Journal of Virology · 2003

Anderson and Lindzey pioneered the use of GPS location clusters to detect cougar kills, exploiting the fact that a lion lingers at a carcass to feed over one or more days, producing a tight cluster of…

Charles R. Anderson Jr., Frederick G. Lindzey · The Journal of Wildlife Management · 2003

Anderson and Lindzey developed and validated a method to estimate cougar kill rates by identifying spatial clusters of GPS locations and field-checking them for carcasses, then modeling which clusters…

Anderson, C.R. & Lindzey, F.G. · Wildlife Society Bulletin · 2003

Knopff and colleagues rigorously evaluated how GPS cluster methods perform for estimating cougar predation, testing how fix interval, search protocol, and model assumptions affect inferences about kil…

Kyle H. Knopff, Aliah A. Knopff, Mark S. Boyce · The Journal of Wildlife Management · 2009

Using genetic samples from pumas across southern California, this study revealed that freeways and urban development had carved the regional population into fragments with reduced gene flow and signs…

Ernest HB, Vickers TW, Morrison SA, Buchalski MR, Boyce WM · PLoS ONE · 2014

Williams and colleagues built custom SMART collars combining GPS, accelerometers, and physiological calibration to measure, for the first time, the moment-to-moment energy expenditure of wild pumas as…

Terrie M. Williams, Lisa Wolfe, Tracy Davis, Traci Kendall, Beau Richter, Yiwei Wang, Caleb Bryce, G. Hugh Elkaim, Christopher C. Wilmers · Science · 2014

Ripple and Beschta documented a striking felid-driven trophic cascade by contrasting heavily visited Zion Canyon, where human presence depressed cougars, with a nearby low-visitation canyon where coug…

Ripple, W.J. & Beschta, R.L. · Biological Conservation · 2006

This study compared a canyon in Zion National Park, where heavy human visitation had driven cougars away, with a less-visited canyon where cougars remained. Where cougars were scarce, mule deer were f…

Ripple, W. J., Beschta, R. L. · Biological Conservation · 2006

This landmark monograph reported one of the first multi-year radio-telemetry studies of cougars, conducted in the rugged Idaho Primitive Area. By collaring and following individual lions, the team doc…

John Seidensticker, Maurice Hornocker, Wilbur Wiles, John Messick · Wildlife Monographs · 1973

This study sequenced complete genomes of pumas from across the Americas to examine how range-wide demographic history shaped genetic load and diversity. The authors confirmed the deep divergence betwe…

Nedda F. Saremi, Beth Shapiro, et al. · Nature Communications · 2019

The Florida panther, an isolated cougar population confined to the southern tip of Florida, depends on a shrinking, fragmented landscape threaded by highways and expanding development. This overview s…

Sylvatic plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, circulates among rodents in the American West, and mountain lions become exposed by preying on infected rodents and lagomorphs. This overview…

Pumas living near urban areas adjust where, when and how they move, feed and rest in response to human presence and the built environment. This overview synthesises telemetry and GPS-cluster research,…

An overview of the long-running question of whether cougar predation adds to or merely substitutes for other deer mortality. If predation is compensatory, cats mainly take individuals that would have…

An overview of cases where puma predation, though ecologically natural, poses risks to endangered or reintroduced prey populations. Examples include predation on woodland caribou, bighorn sheep, and r…

A survey of evidence that cougars can indirectly shape streamside plant communities by limiting and frightening deer. Where cougars are abundant, reduced and more wary deer browse cottonwoods, willows…

Dispersal is central to puma ecology, with young males traveling long distances to establish ranges while females often settle nearer their natal areas. This overview synthesizes telemetry and genetic…

Juvenile cougar dispersal, the long-distance movements by which young animals find new territories and exchange genes, is sharply constrained in landscapes fragmented by roads and development around s…

Because feline immunodeficiency virus evolves rapidly and is transmitted through fighting, its genetic signal can reveal how pumas move across fragmented landscapes. This overview surveys studies that…