What drives prey selection? Assessment of tiger food habits across the Terai-Arc landscape, India

Abstract

Large carnivores strongly shape ecological interactions within their respective ecosystems, but experience significant conflicts with human across their range due to their specific ecological resource requirements. The tiger (Panthera tigris) typifies the challenges faced by the large carnivore communities globally. India retains majority of the global tiger population with significant numbers outside protected areas (PAs) that are involved in conflicts from livestock predation and human/tiger death. To understand the prey selection patterns and spatio-temporal patterns of livestock predation-related conflict issues we investigated tiger food habits across the Indian part of the Terai-Arc Landscape (TAL), a globally-important tiger conservation landscape in India. We used 510 genetically-confirmed tiger faeces collected across the landscape and ascertained 10 wild and livestock as major prey species. Large-bodied species (sambar, swamp deer, nilgai, chital, wild pig and livestock) comprised ~94% of tiger diet, with sambar, chital and livestock were the major prey species. Habitat-specific (Shivalik-Bhabar and Terai) analyses show significantly different pattern of prey selections determined by abundance and prey body weight. Results also suggest that PA and non-PAs of Terai habitat are more prone to livestock depredation-related conflicts, and careful management interventions and community involvements are required to reduce such threats. We suggest long-term plans including population estimation of tigers and prey outside PAs, reducing grazing pressures and cattle enumeration, detailed investigation of tiger deaths etc. to ensure future tiger sustainability across this habitat.

The cost of sympatry: spatio-temporal patterns in leopard dietary and physiological responses to tiger competition in Rajaji Tiger Reserve, India

“…were separated by sieving the dried samples through sterile 0.5 mm stainless steel mesh and the faecal powders were collected and stored in −20 °C. The primary guard hairs (20-30 hairs/sample) were used to prepare permanent slides and were examined for medulla structures (Mukherjee et al 1994) using available references (Bahuguna et al 2010, Biswas et al 2022b) to identify leopard prey species. Sample size estimation for diet analyses was conducted through a sample rarefaction curve (Magurran 2004), where the species diversity in leopard diet was estimated using Shannon diversity index (Magurran 2004) with EstimateS (Colwell 2006).…”