🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

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

Ellis and co-authors produced consensus veterinary guidelines defining the environmental needs of domestic cats, organised around five pillars: a safe place; multiple and separated key resources; oppo…

Ellis SLH, Rodan I, Carney HC, Heath S, Rochlitz I, Shearburn LD, et al · Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery · 2013

Ellis and colleagues, on behalf of the American Association of Feline Practitioners and the International Society of Feline Medicine, produced consensus guidelines defining the environmental needs of…

Sarah L. H. Ellis, Ilona Rodan, Hazel C. Carney, et al. · Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery · 2013

This study established a striking association between exposure to anticoagulant rodenticides and severe notoedric mange in bobcats and mountain lions across urban southern California. Necropsies and t…

Riley SPD, Bromley C, Poppenga RH, Uzal FA, Whited L, Sauvajot RM · Journal of Wildlife Management · 2007

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

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 advanced earlier sea-level work by combining climate-change projections with sea-level rise to model future Bengal tiger habitat in the Bangladesh Sundarbans. Using species distribution mod…

Mukul, S.A., Alamgir, M., Sohel, M.S.I., Pert, P.L., Herbohn, J., Turton, S.M., Khan, M.S.I., Munim, S.A., Reza, A.H.M.A., Laurance, W.F. · Science of the Total Environment · 2019

This study validated and applied fecal steroid hormone assays to track ovarian activity in multiple felid species without restraint or blood sampling. The authors characterized how estrogen and proges…

Brown JL, Wasser SK, Wildt DE, Graham LH · Biology of Reproduction · 1994

Herron and Buffington reviewed the principles and practice of environmental enrichment for indoor-housed cats, translating research on feline behaviour and stress physiology into practical recommendat…

Meghan E. Herron, C. A. Tony Buffington · Compendium: Continuing Education for Veterinarians · 2010

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

Karanth and Nichols extended camera-trap capture-recapture into a full density-estimation framework applied across multiple Indian reserves. They combined closed-population abundance estimates from ph…

K. Ullas Karanth, James D. Nichols · Ecology · 1998

Mellen surveyed husbandry across many institutions holding small exotic cats and used multiple regression to identify which factors predicted breeding success. Strikingly, the strongest predictors wer…

Mellen JD · Zoo Biology · 1991

Suraci and colleagues extended the ecology-of-fear framework to whole communities, using playbacks of human voices across the Santa Cruz Mountains to test how fear of humans cascades through a food we…

Justin P. Suraci, Michael Clinchy, Liana Y. Zanette, Christopher C. Wilmers · Ecology Letters · 2019

This study sequenced genomes from tigers representing multiple subspecies to reconstruct their demographic history and detect local adaptation. The authors found that tigers share a recent common ance…

Yue-Chen Liu, Shu-Jin Luo, et al. · Current Biology · 2018

This study sequenced whole genomes from tigers representing the major living populations and found strong genomic support for distinct subspecies despite the tiger's recent origin. The authors detecte…

Liu YC, Sun X, Driscoll C, et al. · Current Biology · 2018

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

Sollmann, Gardner, and Belant used simulation to investigate how the configuration of camera arrays affects the accuracy and precision of spatially explicit capture-recapture density estimates. They v…

Rahel Sollmann, Beth Gardner, Jerrold L. Belant · PLOS ONE · 2012

This influential modeling study examined Canada lynx and American marten at the southern edge of their range in the northern Appalachians, asking how climate warming, forest conversion, and trapping p…

Carroll, C. · Conservation Biology · 2007

Worton introduced kernel density estimation to home-range analysis, providing a way to estimate the utilization distribution, a probability surface describing how intensively an animal uses each part…

Bruce J. Worton · Ecology · 1989

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

This study used multiple genetic markers to compare mainland and Sunda island clouded leopards and found divergence comparable to that between well-recognized cat species. The authors showed that clou…

Buckley-Beason VA, Johnson WE, Nash WG, et al. · Current Biology · 2006

Whitham and Wielebnowski argued that zoo welfare assessment should move beyond minimising negative states toward measuring and promoting positive welfare, and toward individual-level, continuous monit…

Whitham JC, Wielebnowski N · Applied Animal Behaviour Science · 2013

This study examined sex-chromosome DNA sequences to estimate the timing and pattern of diversification across the cat family. By comparing X- and Y-linked markers, which evolve at different rates and…

Pecon-Slattery J, O'Brien SJ · Genetics · 1998

Suryawanshi and colleagues quantified livestock depredation by snow leopards and wolves across the Indian trans-Himalaya and compared actual losses with herders' perceptions of those losses. They foun…

Kulbhushansingh R. Suryawanshi, et al. · Journal of Applied Ecology · 2013

This comparative study applied trait ratings to multiple felid species, including domestic cats, African lions, snow leopards, clouded leopards, and Scottish wildcats, to ask whether personality dimen…

Marieke Gartner, David Powell, Alexander Weiss · Journal of Comparative Psychology · 2014

This study analyzed mitochondrial and microsatellite markers from tigers across their range and provided the first comprehensive molecular framework supporting multiple traditional subspecies. The aut…

Luo SJ, Kim JH, Johnson WE, et al. · PLoS Biology · 2004

Owen-Smith and Mills assembled a detailed predation web for Kruger National Park, quantifying which predators kill which prey and in what proportions across the size spectrum. They mapped how lion, le…

Owen-Smith, N. & Mills, M.G.L. · Journal of Animal Ecology · 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

Nutter, Levine and Stoskopf studied the reproductive biology of free-roaming cats to inform population management, monitoring breeding females in feral colonies. They documented high reproductive outp…

Felicia B. Nutter, Jay F. Levine, Michael K. Stoskopf · Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association · 2004

Beyond scientific monitoring, dedicated wildlife photographers build custom DSLR camera-trap rigs to capture high-resolution, artfully lit images of elusive cats in their natural environment. This ove…