🧬 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

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, CITES, governs cross-border trade in wildlife, and the world's big cats are listed on its Appendix I, banning commercial international trad…

Namibia's communal conservancy program, which devolves rights to manage and benefit from wildlife to local communities, is among the most studied community-based conservation models and is credited wi…

Cities concentrate food in forms that wildlife can exploit, from garbage and compost to pet food, livestock, abundant commensal rodents and feral animals, and these anthropogenic subsidies underpin ma…

Across the felid family, the capacity to flexibly adjust activity timing, space use, diet and risk responses largely determines which species can live near people. This overview synthesises evidence t…

Camera traps, often paired with individual identification by coat patterns and spatial capture-recapture models, are a cornerstone method for studying secretive felids in human-dominated landscapes. T…

Climate change poses varied threats to the world's cats, and assessing which species and populations are most vulnerable is increasingly important for prioritization. This overview surveys research on…

Compensation and insurance schemes aim to offset the costs that big cats impose on livestock owners, reducing the incentive for retaliatory killing. This overview surveys research evaluating these fin…

As climate change shifts the distribution of suitable habitat, connectivity must allow species to track those changes by moving to newly suitable areas, adding a dynamic dimension to corridor planning…

The fishing cat is a wetland specialist of South and Southeast Asia, increasingly threatened by the loss and fragmentation of marshes and mangroves. This overview surveys the limited but growing genet…

Comparative and population genomics allow researchers to find genes shaped by natural selection in cats, revealing the molecular basis of their predatory adaptations. This overview surveys the methods…

Environmental DNA, the genetic material that animals shed into their surroundings, offers a powerful new way to detect elusive cats without observing them directly. This overview surveys how environme…

Forensic science has become a powerful tool against the illegal trade in big cat parts, allowing seized skins, bones, and other products to be identified to species, and sometimes to population or ind…

In many cats, one sex disperses farther than the other, with males typically moving while females remain near their natal range, a pattern that leaves distinct genetic footprints. This overview survey…

Pallas's cat, or the manul, is a small, densely furred cat of the Central Asian steppe whose phylogenetic placement was clarified by molecular data linking it to the leopard cat lineage. This overview…

Genomic erosion refers to the cumulative loss of genetic diversity and accumulation of harmful variation that accompanies population decline, and cats provide some of its clearest examples. This overv…

Parks, greenbelts, riparian corridors, vacant lots and vegetated drainage form a network of green infrastructure that urban felids exploit for shelter, hunting and movement. This overview synthesises…

Concentrated, predictable food in cities allows carnivores to meet their needs over smaller areas, contributing to the strikingly compressed home ranges documented in urban felids from leopards to pum…

For much of the twentieth century, cat classification rested on coat patterns, skull morphology, and geography, producing many poorly supported species and subspecies. This overview surveys how molecu…

Successful coexistence with urban felids depends as much on human attitudes, institutions and behaviour as on animal ecology. This overview synthesises social-science research on tolerance, risk perce…

Decisions about where and how cities expand profoundly shape whether large and small carnivores can persist alongside people. This overview synthesises research and practice on integrating carnivore n…

Many felids become more strictly nocturnal as human activity increases, a pattern documented from Indian leopards to Californian bobcats and pumas. This overview synthesises camera-trap and telemetry…

Protecting livestock and poultry from felid predation through non-lethal means is central to reducing conflict and retaliatory killing at the urban and agricultural edge. This overview synthesises res…

Because most wild cats are elusive and difficult to capture, conservation geneticists increasingly rely on noninvasive samples such as scat, hair, and shed cells to obtain DNA without handling the ani…

Zoos and breeding programs maintain studbooks to manage the genetics of captive cat populations, aiming to retain diversity and avoid inbreeding across generations. This overview surveys how pedigree…

Since the first lightly sequenced domestic cat genome, feline genomics has advanced to highly contiguous, chromosome-level assemblies for the domestic cat and an expanding set of wild species. This ov…

Roads fragment habitat, kill animals, and act as barriers to movement, making road ecology an important field for carnivore conservation. This overview surveys research on how roads affect big cats an…

Wire snares are among the most pervasive and indiscriminate threats to big cats, killing or maiming tigers, leopards, lions, and other predators directly and decimating the prey populations they depen…

Modern cats are divided into eight monophyletic lineages: the Panthera lineage (lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars, snow leopards, clouded leopards), the bay cat lineage, the caracal lineage, the ocelot…

Wildlife tourism, much of it built around charismatic big cats, generates revenue that can fund conservation and provide community benefits, but the distribution of those benefits strongly affects con…