🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

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 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 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 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 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

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

Bagchi and Mishra quantified snow leopard predation on livestock in the Spiti region of the Indian trans-Himalaya, combining diet analysis with herder-reported losses to assess the predator's reliance…

Sumanta Bagchi, Charudutt Mishra · Journal of Zoology · 2006

Bagchi and Mishra studied snow leopard diet and livestock depredation in India's Spiti region, linking the cat's reliance on wild prey to its use of domestic stock. Through scat analysis they showed t…

Bagchi, S. & Mishra, C. · Journal of Zoology · 2006

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

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

McCarthy, Fuller, and Munkhtsog reported one of the first detailed studies of snow leopard movement, using VHF telemetry to track cats in the mountains of southwestern Mongolia. Despite the constraint…

Thomas M. McCarthy, Todd K. Fuller, Bariushaa Munkhtsog · Biological Conservation · 2005

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

Gartner, Powell and Weiss applied systematic personality assessment to four felid species, having keepers rate individuals on behavioural traits and then analysing the underlying structure. They ident…

Gartner MC, Powell DM, Weiss A · Journal of Comparative Psychology · 2014

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

Applying the prey-preference framework to high-mountain Asia, Lyngdoh and colleagues compiled snow leopard diet records across the species' range and weighted them by prey availability. They found sno…

Lyngdoh, S. et al. · PLOS ONE · 2014

This study conducted the first range-wide genetic analysis of the snow leopard and proposed dividing the species into three subspecies. Using noninvasive samples collected across the snow leopard's mo…

Janecka JE, Zhang Y, Li D, et al. · Journal of Heredity · 2017

The Andean cat is a rare, specialized felid of the high Andes and Patagonian steppe, dependent on rocky terrain and prey such as mountain vizcachas. This overview surveys what is known about its restr…

An overview of how molecular analysis of prey DNA in faeces is transforming the study of cat diets. By sequencing prey genetic material recovered from scats, researchers can identify prey to species w…

The Global Snow Leopard and Ecosystem Protection Program, GSLEP, is an intergovernmental initiative uniting the twelve snow leopard range countries around a shared conservation agenda, including a goa…

This overview examines community ecotourism initiatives, notably the Himalayan Homestays program in Ladakh, designed to convert snow leopards from a liability into an economic asset for herding househ…

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.…

The high plateaus and meadows that underpin snow leopard prey systems are sensitive to warming, permafrost thaw, and altered precipitation. This overview surveys how degradation of alpine grassland on…

Estimating snow leopard home ranges is especially vulnerable to the autocorrelation problem because dense GPS fixes from a slow-ranging mountain cat are highly correlated, and this overview examines t…

Researchers sometimes attract animals to cameras using food bait, scent lures, visual attractants, or scratching posts to increase detection rates and obtain better-posed, identifiable images. This ov…

Estimating snow leopard density relies heavily on camera trapping combined with capture-recapture, exploiting the unique rosette and spot patterns that allow individual identification. This overview s…

Camera trapping has become the primary method for studying snow leopards, exploiting their habit of traveling and marking along ridgelines. This overview synthesizes how researchers place cameras at s…

Snow leopards, adapted to cold, rugged, high-altitude terrain, present particular welfare considerations in captivity. This overview surveys their husbandry: the importance of elevated rocky structure…