🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

This study built a continental model of connectivity for the jaguar, mapping potential movement corridors linking jaguar populations from Mexico to Argentina. The authors used expert knowledge and lan…

Rabinowitz A, Zeller KA · Biological Conservation · 2010

This foundational study built a continental-scale model of jaguar habitat and connectivity from northern Mexico to Argentina, identifying core populations and the corridors linking them. Using expert…

Rabinowitz, A., Zeller, K.A. · Biological Conservation · 2010

Rabinowitz and Zeller built a continental model of jaguar connectivity spanning from Mexico to Argentina, identifying the corridors linking known jaguar populations across the species' entire range. U…

Alan Rabinowitz, Kathy A. Zeller · Biological Conservation · 2010

This range-wide assessment re-evaluated the jaguar's conservation status by compiling occurrence and threat data across the Americas, concluding that the species has lost a substantial share of its hi…

de la Torre, J.A., Gonzalez-Maya, J.F., Zarza, H., Ceballos, G., Medellin, R.A. · Oryx · 2017

This influential comparative study estimated bite forces across a broad range of living and extinct mammalian carnivores using dry-skull dissection methods and lever modelling, then scaled the results…

Wroe, S.; McHenry, C.; Thomason, J. · Proceedings of the Royal Society B · 2005

Zimmermann, Walpole, and Leader-Williams surveyed cattle ranchers across the Brazilian Pantanal to understand attitudes toward jaguars and pumas amid livestock depredation. They found that ranchers fr…

Alexandra Zimmermann, Matthew J. Walpole, Nigel Leader-Williams · Oryx · 2005

Harmsen and colleagues documented how different mammal species use trails versus off-trail forest to varying degrees, and showed that this differential trail use biases camera-trap data when stations…

Bart J. Harmsen, Rebecca J. Foster, Scott C. Silver, Linde E. T. Ostro, C. Patrick Doncaster · Biotropica · 2010

Terborgh and colleagues exploited a natural experiment created by a Venezuelan hydroelectric reservoir that isolated land-bridge islands lacking large predators such as jaguars and pumas. On predator-…

Terborgh, J., Lopez, L., Nunez, P. et al. · Science · 2001

This pioneering radio-telemetry study followed jaguars in the forests of Belize, providing one of the first quantitative pictures of the species' spatial ecology in Central America. The work documente…

Rabinowitz, A. R., Nottingham, B. G. · Journal of Zoology · 1986

Tobler and Powell used extensive simulations and empirical jaguar data to expose how common camera-trap study designs produce biased or imprecise density estimates. They showed that arrays too small r…

Mathias W. Tobler, George V. N. Powell · Biological Conservation · 2013

Soisalo and Cavalcanti combined camera-trap capture-recapture with GPS radio-telemetry to refine jaguar density estimates in the Brazilian Pantanal, using telemetry-derived movement data to better def…

Marianne K. Soisalo, Sandra M. C. Cavalcanti · Biological Conservation · 2006

Kelly and colleagues estimated puma densities at multiple Latin American sites using camera-trap capture-recapture, confronting the challenge that pumas, unlike jaguars, have relatively uniform coats…

Marcella J. Kelly, Andrew J. Noss, Marcelo S. Di Bitetti, Leonardo Maffei, Rosario L. Arispe, et al. · Journal of Mammalogy · 2008

This methodological landmark established how camera traps combined with capture-recapture statistics could yield rigorous, repeatable estimates of tiger density. Because individual tigers carry unique…

Karanth KU, Nichols JD · Ecology · 1998

Trolle and Kery produced one of the early rigorous density estimates for ocelots, applying closed-population capture-recapture to camera-trap data from the Brazilian Pantanal. Ocelots are well suited…

Mogens Trolle, Marc Kery · Journal of Mammalogy · 2003

Foster and colleagues compared the diets of jaguars and pumas in Belize using scat analysis along a gradient of human disturbance. They found the two big cats partition prey to some degree, with jagua…

Foster, R.J., Harmsen, B.J., Valkenburgh, B., Doncaster, C.P. · Journal of Zoology · 2010

This genomic study sequenced multiple Panthera species and found pervasive evidence that gene flow between lineages, not just simple branching, shaped big cat evolution. The authors detected introgres…

Figueiro HV, Li G, Trindade FJ, et al. · Science Advances · 2017

This study sequenced the cheetah genome and documented its extreme genetic uniformity, a legacy of severe historical bottlenecks. The authors found very low genome-wide diversity, including in immune-…

Dobrynin P, Liu S, Tamazian G, et al. · Genome Biology · 2015

This landmark study produced the first globally consistent, high-resolution maps of forest loss and gain in the 21st century using satellite imagery, quantifying deforestation at fine scale across the…

Hansen, M.C., Potapov, P.V., Moore, R., Hancher, M., Turubanova, S.A., Tyukavina, A., et al. · Science · 2013

This study extended earlier work on feline melanism by surveying agouti signaling protein and melanocortin-1 receptor variation across wild cat species, including the leopard. The authors characterize…

Alexsandra Schneider, Eduardo Eizirik, et al. · PLoS ONE · 2012

Inskip and Zimmermann produced a comprehensive global review of conflict between people and wild cats, synthesising the geography, drivers, and severity of conflict across all felid species. They iden…

Chloe Inskip, Alexandra Zimmermann · Oryx · 2009

Sollmann and colleagues demonstrated that ignoring sex differences in movement and detectability biases carnivore density estimates, using jaguar camera-trap data from central Brazil. Because male jag…

Rahel Sollmann, Mariana M. Furtado, Beth Gardner, Heribert Hofer, Anah T. A. Jacomo, et al. · Biological Conservation · 2011

This paper introduced the MaxEnt method, a maximum-entropy approach for modeling species distributions from presence-only data, which became one of the most widely used tools in the field. Because muc…

Phillips, S.J., Anderson, R.P., Schapire, R.E. · Ecological Modelling · 2006

This influential study identified the molecular basis of black coats across multiple cat species and showed that melanism evolved independently several times in the family. The authors found that mela…

Eduardo Eizirik, Stephen J. O'Brien, et al. · Current Biology · 2003

An early molecular study of the big cats that used mitochondrial 12S rRNA and cytochrome b sequences to probe relationships within the Panthera group. This work was among the first to apply DNA sequen…

Janczewski DN, Modi WS, Stephens JC, O'Brien SJ · Molecular Biology and Evolution · 1995

This early field study examined how jaguars move through the seasonally inundated landscape of the Brazilian Pantanal, combining direct observation and tracking to describe ranging in relation to wate…

Schaller, G. B., Crawshaw, P. G. · Biotropica · 1980

Maffei, Cuellar, and Noss applied jaguar camera-trap capture-recapture in the dry Chaco forest of Bolivia's Kaa-Iya National Park, one of the largest protected areas in the region. From individually i…

Leonardo Maffei, Erika Cuellar, Andrew Noss · Journal of Zoology · 2004

This study analyzed mitochondrial and microsatellite variation across the jaguar's range from Mexico to Argentina and found relatively shallow genetic structure with no support for the many traditiona…

Eizirik E, Kim JH, Menotti-Raymond M, et al. · Molecular Ecology · 2001

The Amazon holds the largest contiguous jaguar population, making its deforestation the single biggest habitat threat to the species. This overview surveys how forest clearing for cattle ranching, soy…

Climate models and ecological research raise concern that combined deforestation and warming could push parts of the Amazon past a tipping point toward drier, savanna-like vegetation, with profound im…

This overview examines Dinofelis, a leopard-to-jaguar-sized cat of the Pliocene and early Pleistocene placed among the Metailurini, whose moderately enlarged, flattened canines mark it as an intermedi…