Assessing the Role of Livestock in Big Cat Prey Choice Using Spatiotemporal Availability Patterns

Abstract

Livestock is represented in big cat diets throughout the world. Husbandry approaches aim to reduce depredation, which may influence patterns of prey choice, but whether felids have a preference for livestock or not often remains unclear as most studies ignore livestock availability. We assessed prey choice of the endangered Persian leopard (Panthera pardus saxicolor) in Golestan National Park, Iran, where conflict over livestock depredation occurs. We analyzed leopard diet (77 scats) and assessed wild and domestic prey abundance by line transect sampling (186 km), camera-trapping (2777 camera days), double-observer point-counts (64 scans) and questionnaire surveys (136 respondents). Based on interviews with 18 shepherds, we estimated monthly grazing time outside six villages with 96 conflict cases to obtain a small livestock (domestic sheep and goat) availability coefficient. Using this coefficient, which ranged between 0.40 and 0.63 for different villages, we estimated the numbers of sheep and goats available to leopard depredation. Leopard diet consisted mainly of wild boar (Sus scrofa) (50.2% biomass consumed), but bezoar goat (Capra aegagrus) was the most preferred prey species (Ij = 0.73), whereas sheep and goats were avoided (Ij = -0.54). When absolute sheep and goat numbers (~11250) were used instead of the corrected ones (~6392), avoidance of small livestock appeared to be even stronger (Ij = -0.71). We suggest that future assessments of livestock choice by felids should incorporate such case-specific corrections for spatiotemporal patterns of availability, which may vary with husbandry methods. Such an approach increases our understanding of human-felid conflict dynamics and the role of livestock in felid diets.

Living on the edge: Multiscale habitat selection by cheetahs in a human‐wildlife landscape

“…In the Maasai Mara, cheetahs do occasionally predate on livestock (Broekhuis, Thuo, & Hayward 2018) and as livestock numbers outside the wildlife areas are high (Broekhuis, Cushman, & Elliot, 2017b; Ogutu et al., 2016) it is potentially an easy food source for cheetahs. However, it has been shown that some carnivores, including cheetahs, prefer wild prey over domestic (Ghoddousi et al., 2016; Marker, 2002) and as wild prey species outside the wildlife areas are declining (Ogutu et al., 2016) it is possible that cheetahs prefer the wildlife areas where large numbers of wild prey are still readily available.…”

Cattle selectivity by leopards suggests ways to mitigate human–leopard conflict

“…Selective killing of livestock by carnivores has high practical importance as it may identify most vulnerable livestock species or intraspecific categories and potentially help reduce conflicts by targeting these high‐risk species or categories. Carnivores may give preference to particular livestock species and take proportionally higher numbers than available (Chetri, Odden, & Wegge, ; Elbroch & Wittmer, ) or, alternatively, avoid or prey them opportunistically (Ghoddousi et al., ; Lyngdoh et al., ; Suryawanshi et al., ).…”

Global patterns in biomass models describing prey consumption by big cats

“…As the number of scat samples with remains of the i ‐th prey ( n i ) was not always reported in literature sources, we calculated it from available data on the frequency of prey occurrence in scats ( f i ) and the total number of collected scats ( n total ) using the relationship f i = ( n i / n total ) × 100 (Ghoddousi et al. ). As Wachter et al.…”

“…, Ghoddousi et al. ). Depredation often leads to retaliatory killing of large carnivores by humans, especially of big cats such as the lion Panthera leo , tiger Panthera tigris , jaguar Panthera onca , leopard Panthera pardus , snow leopard Panthera uncia , puma Puma concolor, and cheetah Acinonyx jubatus , which prey on economically valuable livestock and occasionally may attack humans (Inskip & Zimmermann , Loveridge et al.…”

“…, Ghoddousi et al. ). Biomass models allow researchers to calculate the percentages of prey biomass and prey individuals, and thus to identify the key prey species.…”