🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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 morphological study reconstructed relationships among the pantherine cats while explicitly incorporating fossil taxa and testing how missing data affect tree inference. Working from cranial and s…

Christiansen P · Cladistics · 2008

Vaz, Narayan and colleagues surveyed tigers and leopards across multiple Indian zoos, combining behavioural observation of pacing with non-invasive faecal cortisol measurement. They found substantial…

Vaz J, Narayan EJ, Dileep Kumar R, Thenmozhi K, Thiyagesan K, Baskaran N · PLoS ONE · 2017

A landmark study of intraguild prey partitioning in India's Nagarahole reserve, combining prey censuses with predator kill records to test how three sympatric large carnivores divide a shared ungulate…

Karanth, K.U. & Sunquist, M.E. · Journal of Animal Ecology · 1995

Gopalaswamy and colleagues released SPACECAP, free software implementing Bayesian spatially explicit capture-recapture specifically to make modern density estimation accessible to camera-trap practiti…

Arjun M. Gopalaswamy, J. Andrew Royle, James E. Hines, Pallavi Singh, Devcharan Jathanna, et al. · Methods in Ecology and Evolution · 2012

Following the Bronx Zoo tigers, SARS-CoV-2 infections were confirmed in big cats at zoos and sanctuaries across multiple countries, including additional tigers, lions, snow leopards, pumas and others.…

As apex predators, big cats can exert top-down control that ripples through ecosystems via trophic cascades. This overview synthesizes evidence that lions, tigers, leopards, pumas, and jaguars influen…

This overview synthesises how buffer-zone management and community forestry mediate human-tiger and human-leopard conflict around protected areas in Nepal and India. It reviews programs that share par…

This overview reviews the application of camera-trap surveys and spatially explicit capture-recapture methods to estimate big-cat density in human-dominated and conflict-prone landscapes. It synthesis…

Cat coats are often patterned for concealment, and this overview reviews the function and development of spots, stripes, and rosettes. Patterns such as the tiger stripes and leopard rosettes break up…

Canine distemper virus (CDV) is a morbillivirus closely related to measles and rinderpest that has expanded its host range far beyond dogs to infect lions, tigers, leopards, hyenas, seals and many oth…

An overview of how the kills of large felids redistribute energy and nutrients through ecosystems. Carcasses and the cats' partly eaten remains create nutrient hotspots that fertilize soils and vegeta…

Climate refugia, places relatively buffered from climate change where species can persist, are an increasingly central organizing idea in conservation planning. This overview surveys the typology of r…

This overview synthesises comparative studies that contrast successful and unsuccessful big-cat coexistence efforts to distil transferable lessons. It reviews analyses spanning lion, snow leopard, tig…

Felid species differ in their vocal repertoires, and comparative bioacoustics has sought to map these differences onto phylogeny and ecology. This overview surveys work cataloguing call types across s…

The most realistic forecasts of cat futures combine climate change with land-use change, since for many forest cats habitat conversion is the faster, larger threat. This overview surveys how integrate…

This overview synthesises the theory and practice of compensating farmers for livestock killed by big cats as a tolerance-building tool. It reviews recurring design challenges: verifying claims to pre…

A survey of the three-way interactions among tigers, leopards and dholes, the dominant predators of South and Southeast Asian forests. These species partition a shared ungulate community by prey size…

Captive big cats have become subjects of cognitive testing that reveals their learning abilities and informs enrichment. This overview surveys research using touchscreen and apparatus-based discrimina…

This overview synthesises the widely replicated finding that proximity to forest or natural cover strongly predicts big-cat depredation on livestock, with attacks declining as distance from the forest…

This overview reviews technological and community early-warning systems designed to alert people to the presence of big cats before conflict occurs. It synthesises approaches including GPS- and geofen…