🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

This high-profile study coupled climate, prey, and disease dynamics with metapopulation modeling to project the fate of the critically endangered Iberian lynx. It found that standard reintroduction pl…

Fordham, D.A., Akcakaya, H.R., Araujo, M.B., Keith, D.A., Brook, B.W. · Nature Climate Change · 2013

The recovery of the Iberian lynx rests heavily on a coordinated captive-breeding and reintroduction program, and this overview reviews its components. Captive centers in Spain and Portugal have bred l…

The Iberian lynx is an extreme dietary specialist, relying on the European rabbit for the great majority of its diet, and this overview reviews the consequences of that dependence. Where rabbits are a…

The Iberian lynx, once the world most endangered cat, has staged a remarkable recovery, and this overview reviews its changing distribution. Reduced to a few hundred animals in two isolated population…

Having passed through a severe bottleneck, the Iberian lynx carries very low genetic diversity, and this overview reviews research on the resulting risks. Studies document signs of inbreeding, includi…

The Iberian lynx inhabits Mediterranean scrub and dehesa woodland in a region projected to become hotter and drier. This overview surveys how aridification, increased fire frequency, and shifting vege…

Because climate is shifting where suitable Iberian lynx habitat will lie, conservationists have debated assisted colonization, deliberately establishing populations in areas projected to become suitab…

When species cannot track shifting climate fast enough, assisted migration, deliberately moving them to newly suitable areas, is debated as a last resort. This overview surveys the arguments for and a…

The critically endangered Iberian lynx has been the focus of an intensive conservation breeding program supported by reproductive science. This overview surveys assisted-reproduction efforts for the s…

European rabbit dynamics in Iberia are governed by an interaction of climate, vegetation, and disease, all of which bear on Iberian lynx survival. This overview surveys how temperature and rainfall in…

Climate change can expand the range of pathogens, parasites, and disease vectors, with potential consequences for wild cat health. This overview surveys how warming may alter the distribution of tick-…

This overview compares the four lynx species, the Eurasian, Canada, Iberian, and the bobcat, highlighting how a shared body plan has diversified across habitats and prey. All share short tails, ear tu…

Genetic tools have become central to small-cat conservation, and this overview reviews their applications. Non-invasive sampling of scats and hair allows researchers to confirm the presence of cryptic…

The critically endangered Iberian lynx has been the focus of intensive conservation medicine within recovery programs combining captive breeding, reintroduction, and disease management. Veterinary con…

Habitat corridors that allow subadult cats to move between core areas are central to maintaining gene flow and demographic exchange in fragmented landscapes. This overview surveys research on how conn…

Genome resource banks, sometimes called frozen zoos, store gametes, embryos, and cells from felids to preserve genetic diversity for future use. This overview surveys the concept and practice of bioba…

Having passed through a severe bottleneck, the Iberian lynx carries reduced genetic diversity, which compounds its vulnerability to climate and disease stress. This overview surveys how genetic monito…

Iberian lynx recovery has relied on metapopulation thinking, managing a set of connected subpopulations to spread risk and sustain gene flow. This overview surveys how population viability analyses in…

Tracking whether Iberian lynx recovery is keeping pace with environmental change requires sustained, standardized monitoring of cats, rabbits, and habitat. This overview surveys the census methods, ca…

Effective population size, the genetically relevant number of breeders, is a key indicator of a fragmented population's resilience. This overview surveys how researchers estimate it for cats from noni…

Climate-adaptation strategies, refugia protection, corridors, assisted colonization, need monitoring to know whether they work over the long timescales of climate change. This overview surveys the ind…

Population viability analysis estimates extinction risk by simulating a population's demography forward in time, and it is increasingly run under climate scenarios for threatened cats. This overview s…

Recovering viable gametes from animals shortly after death allows valuable genetics to be salvaged that would otherwise be lost. This overview surveys post-mortem gamete rescue in felids, including th…

How flexibly a cat can switch prey when its preferred species declines shapes its resilience to drought and habitat change. This overview surveys evidence on dietary breadth across felids, from specia…

The Iberian lynx is a hyperspecialist on European rabbit, so rabbit population crashes from rabbit hemorrhagic disease (RHDV, including the RHDV2 variant) and myxomatosis directly threaten the cat. Th…

Releasing captive-bred cats into the wild aims to restore or reinforce populations but requires that animals possess the skills and health to survive and reproduce. This overview surveys reintroductio…

Vehicle collisions are a leading cause of Iberian lynx death and a major barrier to the connectivity that climate-adaptive recovery depends on. This overview surveys how road networks fragment lynx ha…

Deciding which individuals, tissues, and species to bank, and how to use stored material, requires strategy to maximize conservation value. This overview surveys the principles guiding genome resource…

Many felids, especially genetically depauperate species like the cheetah, produce ejaculates with a high proportion of structurally abnormal sperm, a condition called teratospermia. This overview surv…

The Iberian lynx captive breeding program is widely cited as a conservation success that helped reverse the species' decline toward extinction. This overview surveys the program's establishment, its g…