Abstract
Fifteen extant species of cats inhabit India, and the northeastern region of the country is among the richest with nine species. Among these are the “standard four”, an assemblage of Clouded Leopard Neofelis nebulosa, Asiatic Golden Cat Catopuma temminckii, Marbled Cat Pardofelis marmorata, and Leopard Cat Prionailurus bengalensis, which also occur across southeastern Asia. Within India, despite several surveys in this region, very little information exists on the ecology of this assemblage to explain their co-occurrence. In this paper, we put together data from several independent camera trapping studies over 10 sites across northeastern India to examine and interpret diel activity patterns of this group. While we present results for all the four species, we focus on two species, the Marbled Cat and Leopard Cat, which are of very similar body size and are potential competitors. We used kernel density estimates to measure diel activity patterns of all four species and overlap in activity between Marbled Cat and Leopard Cat at the regional scale as well as the point scale. We obtained 783 captures of the standard four from >27,500 trap nights. The Asiatic Golden Cat and Marbled Cat were strongly diurnal, Clouded Leopard largely crepuscular and nocturnal, and Leopard Cat largely nocturnal. The degree of overlap between Marbled Cat and Leopard Cat activity was low and in consensus with other studies across southeastern Asia. We interpret this as the differing niche spaces of the two cats due to their specific pre-existing adaptations, not restricted to the effects of competition. The point scale analysis when both cats are captured at the same location and separately show no shift in activity pattern, supporting our hypothesis of pre-existing differences in resources, such as food, playing a major role in facilitating co-existence. Our study, however, is preliminary and additional information with robust analysis is required to test this finding.
Highlights
India’s geographic location at the confluence of major biogeographic realms has contributed towards its extraordinary biodiversity (Mani 1974)
Fifteen extant species of cats inhabit India, and the northeastern region of the country is among the richest with nine species. Among these are the “standard four”, an assemblage of Clouded Leopard Neofelis nebulosa, Asiatic Golden Cat Catopuma temminckii, Marbled Cat Pardofelis marmorata, and Leopard Cat Prionailurus bengalensis, which occur across southeastern Asia
The highest records (61%) were from Pakke tiger reserve (TR), since annual camera trapping is conducted in the reserve, primarily to assess the Tiger population as part of the All India Tiger Monitoring exercise followed by Eaglenest wildlife sanctuary (WS) and the contiguous Singchung-Bugun village community reserve (VCR) (24%)
Summary
India’s geographic location at the confluence of major biogeographic realms has contributed towards its extraordinary biodiversity (Mani 1974). The family Felidae is well-represented in India with 15 extant species, constituting around 37% of the global felid diversity (Kitchener et al 2017). While speciation seems to have played a major role in structuring the felid assemblage of South America, the Indian felid assemblage resulted from a series of colonization events (Johnson et al 2006). Of the 14 felid genera recognized by Kitchener et al (2017), nine occur in India. Segregation over body size, diet, space, and time are recognized as the major facilitators of co-existence in carnivores, including wild cats (Caro & Stoner 2003; Morales & Giannini 2010; Sunarto et al 2015; Cruz et al 2018; Hearn et al 2018)
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