🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

The IUCN Cat Specialist Group convened a Cat Classification Task Force to reconcile decades of conflicting felid taxonomy with modern genetic and morphological evidence. The resulting consensus recogn…

Andrew C. Kitchener, Christiane Breitenmoser-Wursten, Eduardo Eizirik, et al. (Cat Classification Task Force) · Cat News Special Issue · 2017

This landmark study documented the catastrophic 1994 canine distemper virus (CDV) outbreak that killed roughly a third of the Serengeti lion population, an estimated 1,000 lions, along with leopards,…

M. Roelke-Parker, L. Munson, C. Packer, et al. · Nature · 1996

Athreya and colleagues analysed leopard scats from a farmland landscape in western Maharashtra to quantify diet where leopards live amid dense human settlement. They found domestic animals, especially…

Vidya Athreya, Morten Odden, John D. C. Linnell, Jagdish Krishnaswamy, K. Ullas Karanth · Oryx · 2016

Jackson and Wangchuk described a community-driven model for reducing snow leopard depredation and building tolerance, drawing on work in Ladakh and Nepal. They detailed participatory methods in which…

Rodney Jackson, Rinchen Wangchuk · Human Dimensions of Wildlife · 2004

Cochran and Lord described one of the first practical VHF radio-tracking systems built for free-ranging wildlife, pairing miniaturized transmitters with directional receiving antennas to fix animal po…

William W. Cochran, Rexford D. Lord Jr. · The Journal of Wildlife Management · 1963

This comprehensive revision, produced by the Cat Classification Task Force of the IUCN Cat Specialist Group, synthesized morphological, molecular, and biogeographic evidence to propose a consistent, e…

Kitchener AC, Breitenmoser-Wursten C, Eizirik E, Gentry A, Werdelin L, Wilting A, et al. · Cat News Special Issue · 2017

The landmark synthesis that re-anchored modern felid taxonomy. A 16-member IUCN Cat Specialist Group task force reviewed morphological, molecular, biogeographic, and behavioral evidence across all liv…

Kitchener AC, Breitenmoser-Wursten C, Eizirik E, et al. · Cat News Special Issue 11 · 2017

This monographic revision examined the pampas cats of South America, a group then placed in the genus Lynchailurus, and analyzed their morphological variation and biogeography. The author documented s…

Garcia-Perea R · American Museum Novitates · 1994

By fitting GPS collars to leopards living among farms and villages in western Maharashtra, this study quantified how big cats navigate a landscape saturated with people. Collared leopards were strongl…

Odden M, Athreya V, Rattan S, Linnell JDC · PLoS ONE · 2014

Carlstead, Brown and Seidensticker conducted an early, influential study using non-invasive hormone measures on small felids. They manipulated the housing of leopard cats, adding and removing hiding p…

Carlstead K, Brown JL, Seidensticker J · Zoo Biology · 1993

A companion to their prey-selection study, Karanth and Sunquist examined how the hunting behavior, social organization and activity patterns of tigers, leopards and dholes in Nagarahole map onto their…

Karanth, K.U. & Sunquist, M.E. · Journal of Zoology · 2000

This study in Nagarahole, southern India, examined how three large predators, the tiger, leopard, and dhole, partition a shared prey community. By analyzing kills and prey availability, the authors sh…

Karanth, K. U., Sunquist, M. E. · Journal of Animal Ecology · 2000

Athreya and colleagues camera-trapped a densely populated agricultural landscape in Maharashtra with no protected forest and found surprisingly high densities of leopards and striped hyenas living amo…

Vidya Athreya, Morten Odden, John D. C. Linnell, Jagdish Krishnaswamy, Ullas Karanth · PLOS ONE · 2013

This influential study documented free-ranging leopards living at high density in the densely populated, intensively cultivated countryside of Maharashtra, India, far from any protected forest. Using…

Athreya V, Odden M, Linnell JDC, Krishnaswamy J, Karanth U · PLoS ONE · 2013

Wang and Macdonald applied camera-trap capture-recapture to tigers and leopards in the high-altitude mountains of Bhutan, documenting the surprising presence of tigers at unusually high elevations and…

Sherub Wang, David W. Macdonald · Biological Conservation · 2009

Building on the prey-preference series, Hayward, O'Brien and Kerley developed regression models that predict the density a reserve can support for each large African predator from the available biomas…

Hayward, M.W., O'Brien, J. & Kerley, G.I.H. · Biological Conservation · 2007

This study combined species distribution modeling with projected climate change to locate the parts of High Asia most likely to remain suitable for snow leopards as temperatures rise. By overlaying cu…

Li, J., McCarthy, T.M., Wang, H., Weckworth, B.V., Schaller, G.B., Mishra, C., Lu, Z., Beissinger, S.R. · Biological Conservation · 2016

This study generated a high-quality genome of the leopard and compared it across the dietary spectrum, contrasting strict carnivores like cats with omnivores and herbivores to identify the genomic bas…

Soonok Kim, Yun Sung Cho, Jong Bhak, et al. · Genome Biology · 2016

Andheria, Karanth and Kumar quantified the diets of tiger, leopard and dhole in southern India's Bandipur Tiger Reserve using scat analysis combined with prey-availability data. They documented how th…

Andheria, A.P., Karanth, K.U. & Kumar, N.S. · Journal of Zoology · 2007

At the 5,300-year-old farming village of Quanhucun in central China, Hu and colleagues combined zooarchaeology with stable isotope analysis of cat, rodent, human and dog bones to reconstruct an early…

Yaowu Hu, Songmei Hu, Weilin Wang, et al. · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2014

This paper argued that projections of species distributions under climate change carry large uncertainty arising from the choice of model, climate scenario, and other factors, and that ensemble foreca…

Araujo, M.B., New, M. · Trends in Ecology & Evolution · 2007

Jackson and colleagues adapted photographic capture-recapture to snow leopards, whose distinctive rosette and spot patterns allow individual identification. Working in the rugged high mountains of Cen…

Rodney M. Jackson, John D. Roe, Rinchen Wangchuk, Don O. Hunter · Wildlife Society Bulletin · 2006

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

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 morphological companion to the molecular split examined pelage and skull characters across clouded leopards and found that Sunda island animals differ consistently from mainland ones. The authors…

Kitchener AC, Beaumont MA, Richardson D · Current Biology · 2006

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 described Panthera blytheae, a newly recognized fossil cat from the Tibetan Himalaya that represents the oldest known member of the pantherine lineage, the group containing all living big c…

Z. Jack Tseng, Xiaoming Wang, Graham J. Slater, Gary T. Takeuchi, Qiang Li, Juan Liu, Guangpu Xie · Proceedings of the Royal Society B · 2014

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

Palomares and Caro compiled and analyzed the global record of carnivores killing other carnivores, establishing intraguild predation as a widespread structuring force. They showed that interspecific k…

Palomares, F. & Caro, T.M. · The American Naturalist · 1999