Spatial variation in the density and vulnerability of preferred prey in the landscape shape patterns of Amur tiger habitat use

Petrunenko, Yuri K.; Montgomery, Robert A.; Seryodkin, Ivan V.; Zaumyslova, Olga Yu.; Miquelle, Dale G.; Macdonald, David W.

doi:10.1111/oik.01803

Cited by 28 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 57 publications

(114 reference statements)

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“…Clouded leopard and golden cat are likely to concentrate their hunting where prey is abundant and accessible [ 32 ]. The reciprocal results for Sipurak and RKE, where the highest occupancy for one felid species occurred alongside the lowest occupancy of the other, and vice versa, suggests that there is a broad level competition between them.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the spatiotemporal interactions of mesopredators in Sumatra’s tropical rainforest

2018

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Co-occurrence between mesopredators can be achieved by differentiation of prey, temporal activity, and spatial habitat use. The study of mesopredator interactions is a growing area of research in tropical forests and shedding new light on inter-guild competition between threatened vertebrate species that were previously little understood. Here, we investigate sympatry between the Sunda clouded leopard (Neofelis diardi) and Asiatic golden cat (Pardofelis temminckii) living in the Sumatran rainforests of Indonesia. We investigate: i) spatial overlap of predator-prey species using a combination of single-species occupancy modelling and Bayesian two-species modelling, while controlling for the possible influence of several confounding landscape variables; and, ii) temporal overlap between mesopredators and their shared prey through calculating their kernel density estimate associations. From four study areas, representing lowland, hill, sub-montane and montane forest, 28,404 camera trap nights were sampled. Clouded leopard and golden cat were respectively detected in 24.3% and 22.6% of the 292 sampling sites (camera stations) and co-occurred in 29.6% of the sites where they were detected. Golden cat occupancy was highest in the study area where clouded leopard occupancy was lowest and conversely lowest in the study area where clouded leopard occupancy was highest. However, our fine-scale (camera trap site) analyses found no evidence of avoidance between these two felid species. While both mesopredators exhibited highest spatial overlap with the larger-bodied prey species, temporal niche separation was also found. Clouded leopard was more nocturnal and, consequently, had higher temporal overlap with the more nocturnal prey species, such as porcupine and mouse deer, whereas the more diurnal golden cat had higher overlap with the strictly diurnal great argus pheasant. The Bayesian two species occupancy modelling approach applied in our study fills several important knowledge gaps of Sumatra’s lesser known mesopredators and provides a replicable methodology for studying interspecific competition for other small-medium sized carnivore species in the tropics.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the spatiotemporal interactions of mesopredators in Sumatra’s tropical rainforest

2018

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“…In this context it is surprising that deer availability still accounted for 56% of the variation in lynx habitat selection explained by the model. As highlighted by a recent study on Amur tigers in Siberia, taking the availability of all prey species into account improves the understanding of how prey occurrence shapes habitat selection of a predator (Petrunenko et al ). Thus, including information on the distribution and availability of chamois in a future study will help to better understand the importance of alternative prey for the landscape of coexistence for lynx in the Alps.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A landscape of coexistence for a large predator in a human dominated landscape

Gehr

Hofer

Muff

et al. 2017

Oikos

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Human related mortality is a major threat for large carnivores all over the world and there is increasing evidence that large predators respond to human related risks in a similar way as prey respond to predation risk. This insight recently led to the conceptual development of a landscape of coexistence that can be used to identify areas which can sustain large predator populations in human dominated landscapes. In this study we applied the landscape of coexistence concept to a large predator in Europe. We investigated to what extent Eurasian lynx Lynx lynx habitat selection is affected by human disturbance in a human dominated landscape. More specifically, we were interested in the existence of a tradeoff between the availability of roe deer, one of their main prey and avoidance of human disturbance and how this affects the spatiotemporal space use patterns of lynx. We found that lynx face a tradeoff between high prey availability and avoidance of human disturbance and that they respond to this by using areas of high prey availability (but also high human disturbance) during the night when human activity is low. Furthermore our analysis showed that lynx increase their travelling speed and remain more in cover when they are close to areas of high human disturbance. Despite clear behavioral adjustments in response to human presence, prey availability still proved to be the most important predictor of lynx occurrence at small spatial scale, whereas human disturbance was considerably less important. The results of our study demonstrate how spatio-temporal adaptations in habitat selection enable large carnivores to persist in human dominated landscapes and demonstrate the usefulness of the concept of a landscape of coexistence to develop adaptive management plans for endangered populations of large carnivores.

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“…Conservation Area INTRODUCTION Successful conservation efforts rely on a sound understanding of how animals utilize their surrounding habitat. Habitat selection by large carnivores has been widely investigated (Stephens & Krebs, 1986;Funston et al, 2001;Crawshaw & Quigley, 1991;Hopcraft et al, 2005;Balme et al, 2007;Mosser et al, 2009;De Boer et al, 2010;Vlaeix et al, 2012;Petrunenko et al, 2016) with prey abundance and catchability of prey (Hopcraft et al, 2005;Balme et al, 2007;Hebblewhite et al, 2005) being key factors in driving most large terrestrial carnivores in how they utilize the land-scape. Like most large terrestrial carnivores, African lions (Panthera leo) are difficult to conserve in the wild because they require large home ranges, they have a diet that typically includes large prey, they occur at low densities and can pose a significant risk to human safety (Cardillo et al, 2004;Cardillo et al, 2005;Carbone et al, 1999;Purvis et al, 2000, Holmern et al, 2007Hopcraft et al, 2005).…”

Section: African Lion (Panthera Leo) Space Use In the Greater Mapungumentioning

confidence: 99%

African Lion (Panthera leo) Space Use in the Greater Mapungubwe Transfrontier Conservation Area

Snyman¹,

Raynor

Chizinski

et al. 2018

African Journal of Wildlife Research

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Large carnivores are key drivers of ecosystem structure and function, yet their populations are declining worldwide. African lion (Panthera leo) populations have decreased significantly in recent decades with an estimated 23 000 lions left in Africa. Successful conservation efforts rely on a sound understanding of how animals utilize their surrounding habitat. We used movement data from GPS collars to investigate patterns and drivers of seasonal space use by free-roaming lions in the Greater Mapungubwe Transfrontier Conservation Area (GM-TFCA). We developed individual and population-level resource utilization functions (RUF) from 2008 to 2015. RUFs relate non-uniform space use within a home range to landscape metrics in a multiple regression framework. We identified six landscape features hypothesized a priori to be good predictors of lion space use: land use, land cover, elevation, terrain ruggedness, distance to human settlements and rivers. Only elevation during the dry season was a significant factor detected for lion space use (â ± S.E.) (-0.278 ± 0.107, CI =-0.4881,-0.0676). Across seasons, lions varied in their avoidance of human settlements, but 12 of 18 (67%) individuals selected areas within their home ranges that were farther from human settlements. Lions moved randomly across the landscape independent of vegetation type regardless of season. In season-specific analyses, some lions avoided human settlements (dry season: 45%, [n = 10] utilized areas farther from settlements; wet season: 50% [n = 9]). The lack of avoidance of settlements by some lions in our study also confirms that individual variation among lions can lead to human-wildlife conflicts. Perhaps the most critical observation from our study is that individual lions acted very differently as they used the landscape, which suggests the need for management plans to be landscape and case-specific.

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Spatial variation in the density and vulnerability of preferred prey in the landscape shape patterns of Amur tiger habitat use

Cited by 28 publications

References 57 publications

Assessing the spatiotemporal interactions of mesopredators in Sumatra’s tropical rainforest

Assessing the spatiotemporal interactions of mesopredators in Sumatra’s tropical rainforest

A landscape of coexistence for a large predator in a human dominated landscape

African Lion (Panthera leo) Space Use in the Greater Mapungubwe Transfrontier Conservation Area

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