The jaguar is the top predator of the Atlantic Forest (AF), which is a highly threatened biodiversity hotspot that occurs in Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina. By combining data sets from 14 research groups across the region, we determine the population status of the jaguar and propose a spatial prioritization for conservation actions. About 85% of the jaguar’s habitat in the AF has been lost and only 7% remains in good condition. Jaguars persist in around 2.8% of the region, and live in very low densities in most of the areas. The population of jaguars in the AF is probably lower than 300 individuals scattered in small sub-populations. We identified seven Jaguar Conservation Units (JCUs) and seven potential JCUs, and only three of these areas may have ≥50 individuals. A connectivity analysis shows that most of the JCUs are isolated. Habitat loss and fragmentation were the major causes for jaguar decline, but human induced mortality is the main threat for the remaining population. We classified areas according to their contribution to jaguar conservation and we recommend management actions for each of them. The methodology in this study could be used for conservation planning of other carnivore species.

Accurately estimating home range and understanding movement behavior can provide important information on ecological processes. Advances in data collection and analysis have improved our ability to estimate home range and movement parameters, both of which have the potential to impact species conservation. Fitting continuous-time movement model to data and incorporating the autocorrelated kernel density estimator (AKDE), we investigated range residency of forty-four jaguars fit with GPS collars across five biomes in Brazil and Argentina. We assessed home range and movement parameters of range resident animals and compared AKDE estimates with kernel density estimates (KDE). We accounted for differential space use and movement among individuals, sex, region, and habitat quality. Thirty-three (80%) of collared jaguars were range resident. Home range estimates using AKDE were 1.02 to 4.80 times larger than KDE estimates that did not consider autocorrelation. Males exhibited larger home ranges, more directional movement paths, and a trend towards larger distances traveled per day. Jaguars with the largest home ranges occupied the Atlantic Forest, a biome with high levels of deforestation and high human population density. Our results fill a gap in the knowledge of the species’ ecology with an aim towards better conservation of this endangered/critically endangered carnivore—the top predator in the Neotropics.

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In spite of the worldwide occurrence of domestic cats and dogs, and their close relationship with humans, the number of published papers on free-ranging cats Felis catus and dogs Canis familiaris, is small. The diet of both species was estimated in a suburban and rural environment in July 2002 and January 2003. Visual observations and scat collection of both species were accomplished along a 10 km transect line in the Campus 'Luiz de Queiroz', University of Sa˜o Paulo, Piracicaba, south-eastern Brazil. The diet of both species was determined by analysis of sterilized, washed, dried and sorted scats. Estimated abundances of free-ranging cats and dogs in the sampled area were 81 ( AE 4.32) and 42 ( AE 2.96), respectively. Cats and dogs were more abundant in the suburban than in the rural environment (t= 3.78, Po0.001, N = 55; t= 8.38, Po0.001, N = 55, respectively) and cats were more abundant than dogs in the suburban environment (t= 6.76, Po0.001, N = 55), even though there was no significant difference between the abundance of both species in the rural environment (t = 0.82, P= 0.46, N= 55). Invertebrates were the most commonly consumed item by both species, followed by mammals (cats: 63.24 and 20.51%; dogs: 57.05 and 25.15%, respectively). Niche breadth was 0.4892 for cats and 0.4463 for dogs. Niche overlap was almost complete (0.97108). The consumption of mammals was estimated to be between 16.76 and 25.42 kg individual À1 year À1 for dogs and between 2.01 and 2.9 kg individual À1 year À1 for cats. These data might be useful to establish a management program to minimize the predation pressure of free-ranging cats and dogs on wildlife.

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39Limited conservation resources mean that management decisions are often made on the basis 40 of scarce biological information. Species distribution models (SDMs) are increasingly 41 proposed as a way to improve the representation of biodiversity features in conservation 42 planning, but the extent to which SDMs are used in conservation planning is unclear. We 43 reviewed the peer-reviewed and grey conservation planning literature to explore if and how 44SDMs are used in conservation prioritisations. We use text mining to analyse 641 peer-45 reviewed conservation prioritisation articles published between 2006 and 2012 and find that 46 only 10% of articles specifically mention SDMs in the abstract, title, and/or keywords. We use 47 topic modelling of all peer-reviewed articles plus a detailed review of a random sample of 40 48 peer-reviewed and grey literature plans to evaluate factors that might influence whether 49 decision-makers use SDMs to inform prioritisations. Our results reveal that habitat maps, 50 expert-elicited species distributions, or metrics representing landscape processes (e.g. 51 connectivity surfaces) are used more often than SDMs as biodiversity surrogates in 52 prioritisations. We find four main reasons for using such alternatives in place of SDMs: (i) 53 insufficient species occurrence data (particularly for threatened species); (ii) lack of 54 biologically-meaningful predictor data relevant to the spatial scale of planning; (iii) lack of 55 concern about uncertainty in biodiversity data; and (iv) a focus on accounting for ecological, 56 evolutionary, and cumulative threatening processes that requires alternative data to be 57 collected. Our results suggest that SDMs are perceived as best-suited to dealing with traditional 58 reserve selection objectives and accounting for uncertainties such as future climate change or 59 mapping accuracy. The majority of planners in both the grey and peer-reviewed literature 60 appear to trade off the benefits of using SDMs for the benefits of including information on 61 multiple threats and processes. We suggest that increasing the complexity of species 62 distribution modelling methods might have little impact on their use in conservation planning 63 without a corresponding increase in research aiming at better incorporation of a range of 64 ecological, evolutionary, and threatening processes. 65 66 objectives (Makino et al. 2013). These advances have allowed planners to account for factors 100

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Neotropical mammal diversity is currently threatened by several chronic human-induced pressures. We compiled 1,029 contemporary mammal assemblages surveyed across the Neotropics to quantify the continental-scale extent and intensity of defaunation and understand their determinants based on environmental covariates. We calculated a local defaunation index for all assemblages—adjusted by a false-absence ratio—which was examined using structural equation models. We propose a hunting index based on socioenvironmental co-variables that either intensify or inhibit hunting, which we used as an additional predictor of defaunation. Mammal defaunation intensity across the Neotropics on average erased 56.5% of the local source fauna, with ungulates comprising the most ubiquitous losses. The extent of defaunation is widespread, but more incipient in hitherto relatively intact major biomes that are rapidly succumbing to encroaching deforestation frontiers. Assemblage-wide mammal body mass distribution was greatly reduced from a historical 95th-percentile of ~ 14 kg to only ~ 4 kg in modern assemblages. Defaunation and depletion of large-bodied species were primarily driven by hunting pressure and remaining habitat area. Our findings can inform guidelines to design transnational conservation policies to safeguard native vertebrates, and ensure that the “empty ecosystem” syndrome will be deterred from reaching much of the New World tropics.