🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

This large-scale study evaluated whether protected areas around the world actually reduce human pressures by comparing changes in indicators such as cropland conversion and human footprint inside prot…

Geldmann J, Manica A, Burgess ND, Coad L, Balmford A · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2019

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

This influential review synthesised how animals adjust behaviour to survive in cities, organising responses into categories such as altered activity timing, boldness, foraging on anthropogenic food, a…

Lowry H, Lill A, Wong BBM · Biological Reviews · 2013

This widely cited review examined how carnivores exploit cities, surveying which traits predispose species to urban living and how urban carnivores differ in diet, ranging, activity and behaviour from…

Bateman PW, Fleming PA · Journal of Zoology · 2012

This influential study assessed whether tropical protected areas actually work by surveying parks across many countries and comparing conditions inside their boundaries with the surrounding landscape.…

Bruner AG, Gullison RE, Rice RE, da Fonseca GAB · Science · 2001

This study recovered mitochondrial genomes from the extinct scimitar-toothed cat Homotherium using ancient DNA, including a specimen from the permafrost, to place the sabertooths relative to living ca…

Johanna L. A. Paijmans, Michael Hofreiter, Ross Barnett, et al. · Current Biology · 2017

Using GPS-tracking data from many mammal species worldwide, this study found that animals in areas with high human footprint moved substantially shorter distances than those in wilder areas, indicatin…

Tucker MA, Bohning-Gaese K, Fagan WF, Fryxell JM, et al · Science · 2018

Using genome-wide data, this study showed that the felid family tree is not a simple bifurcating set of clean splits but is laced with signals of ancient interspecific hybridization. The authors docum…

Gang Li, Brian W. Davis, Eduardo Eizirik, William J. Murphy · Genome Research · 2016

This study quantified how much range the world's large carnivores have lost by comparing historical and current distributions across many species, including big cats. The authors found that large carn…

Wolf C, Ripple WJ · Royal Society Open Science · 2017

Global biodiversity policy has coalesced around targets to protect or conserve thirty percent of land and sea by 2030, widely known as 30x30. This overview surveys research on what such area-based tar…

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…

Key Biodiversity Areas are sites identified as significant for the global persistence of biodiversity, and they offer a framework for prioritizing places critical to big cats. This overview surveys re…

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…

Complementing maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA, Y-chromosome markers trace paternal lineages and reveal male-specific patterns of dispersal and mating in cats. This overview surveys how feline Y…

Beyond confounding phylogenies, introgression can transfer beneficial alleles between species, a process termed adaptive introgression. This overview surveys evidence in cats that gene flow during the…

Smilodon, the famous sabertoothed cat of the Americas, is known from abundant fossils such as those at the La Brea tar pits, but its DNA has been difficult to recover from warm-climate deposits. This…

Recovering DNA from extinct cats and historical museum specimens requires specialized techniques to cope with degraded, fragmented, and contaminated genetic material. This overview surveys how researc…

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…

Urban noise from traffic, construction and human activity can mask acoustic cues, induce stress and alter the behaviour of wildlife, including felids that rely on hearing for hunting and vigilance. Th…

Artificial light at night is a pervasive feature of cities that can disrupt the nocturnal felids most reliant on darkness for hunting and movement. This overview synthesises research on how light poll…

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…

A central question in urban ecology is whether animals cope with cities through flexible behaviour within a generation or through heritable evolutionary change over generations. This overview synthesi…

Big cats are often used as umbrella species, whose large area requirements mean that protecting them also protects many co-occurring species, and as flagship species, whose charisma mobilizes public s…

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…

The cat family is notable for an unusually conserved karyotype, with most species sharing a similar chromosome number and arrangement that has changed little over the family's history. This overview s…

Artificial light at night can disrupt the internal circadian clocks that govern activity, hormone cycles and reproduction in animals, with potential consequences for nocturnal carnivores. This overvie…

Citizen science, from sighting and roadkill reporting to camera-trap and tracking projects, has become a powerful tool for monitoring urban felids and engaging the public in coexistence. This overview…

Climate change interacts with urbanisation to reshape the conditions felids face near cities, altering prey availability, water resources, heat exposure, fire regimes and the viability of corridors. 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…

Light and noise rarely act alone; in cities they combine with human presence to create a degraded sensory landscape that wildlife must navigate. This overview synthesises research treating sensory pol…