🧬 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

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 study analyzed genomes across the genus Panthera and found pervasive evidence of ancient gene flow among the big-cat lineages, demonstrating that their evolution was reticulate rather than strict…

Henrique V. Figueiro, Eduardo Eizirik, et al. · Science Advances · 2017

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

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 influential review examined the rapidly growing field of species distribution modeling, comparing statistical methods, discussing the ecological theory connecting environment to occurrence, and o…

Guisan, A., Thuiller, W. · Ecology Letters · 2005

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

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…

This overview synthesises the international guidance developed under the IUCN's human-wildlife conflict and coexistence efforts, which distil principles and good practice for managing conflict involvi…

This overview reviews the application of adaptive management, structured learning through iterative intervention, monitoring, and adjustment, to human-big cat conflict. It synthesises arguments that b…

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…

Climate change can shift the balance between grassland, savanna, shrubland, and forest, transforming the habitat templates that different cats require. This overview surveys how projected biome shifts…

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 cover shapes how snow leopards stalk prey, move across terrain, and den, so shifts in the timing, depth, and persistence of snow under warming can alter their ecology. This overview surveys how r…

This overview examines one of the central operational challenges of compensation schemes: verifying that claimed livestock deaths were genuinely caused by the target predator. It synthesises methods,…

Climate change poses a distinctive threat to snow leopards by altering the high-mountain habitats they depend on. This overview synthesizes research projecting how warming may push the treeline and fo…

Snow leopards inhabit cold, high-elevation environments that are projected to shrink as climate warming pushes the treeline upward and alters alpine ecosystems. This overview surveys research modellin…

As suitable conditions shift, species need corridors that connect where they live now to where they will need to live, a concept sometimes called climate connectivity. This overview surveys methods fo…

Snow leopard persistence is tightly coupled to wild ungulate prey such as blue sheep (bharal), Himalayan ibex, and argali, whose forage and distribution shift with warming. This overview surveys how a…

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…

Climate velocity measures how fast and in what direction conditions are shifting across a landscape, indicating the speed at which species must move to keep pace. This overview surveys how climate vel…