Abstract
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.
Highlights
Co-occurrence within a predator guild can be achieved through the differentiation of prey base composition, segregating temporal activity, and segregating spatial overlap within habitat patches [1, 2]
From the combined camera trap data set, clouded leopard was detected at 71/292 stations, yielding a naïve occupancy estimate of 0.24, whereas golden cat was detected at 66/292 stations (0.23)
We found differences in the extent to which clouded leopard and golden cat spatially overlapped with different prey species
Summary
Co-occurrence within a predator guild can be achieved through the differentiation of prey base composition, segregating temporal activity, and segregating spatial overlap within habitat patches [1, 2]. Habitat differentially would be expected by the mesopredator in response to the habitat use of the apex predator, such as leopards (Panthera pardus) foraging in forest patches with lower prey abundance in order to avoid tigers (Panthera tigris) that dominate prey-rich areas [5]. These behavioural mechanisms have been demonstrated to promote such co-existence in a variety of felid communities [6, 7]. Little attention has been paid to the mesopredators, such as the smaller felids species living in Southeast Asia’s humid evergreen rainforest, which are under threat, lack data but are presumed to be in need of active management
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