Abstract
The Leopard Cat Prionailurus bengalensis is thought to be Asia’s most abundant wild cat. Yet, the species’ status is poorly known due to a lack of rigorous population estimates. Based on the few studies available, Leopard Cats appear to be more abundant in degraded forests, potentially due to increased prey availability. We conducted camera trap surveys, rodent live-trapping, and spatially-explicit capture-recapture analyses to estimate the density of Leopard Cats within a degraded tropical forest fragment (148km2) in northeastern Thailand. A total effort of 12,615 camera trap nights across 65km2 of trapping area resulted in at least 25 uniquely identified individuals. Average rodent biomass (the main prey of Leopard Cats) was highest in the dry evergreen forest (469.0g/ha), followed by dry dipterocarp forest (287.5g/ha) and reforested areas (174.2g/ha). Accordingly, Leopard Cat densities were highest in the dry evergreen forest with 21.42 individuals/100km2, followed by the reforested areas with 7.9 individuals/100km2. Only two detections came from the dry dipterocarp forest despite both an extensive survey effort (4,069 trap nights) and available prey. Although the dipterocarp supported the second highest average rodent biomass, it lacked a key prey species, Maxomys surifer, possibly explaining low encounter rates in that habitat. Our results provide important baseline information concerning the population status of Leopard Cat in southeastern Asia. Further, our findings corroborate with other studies that found a tolerance among Leopard Cats for degraded forests, highlighting the potential for forest fragments to serve as long-term conservation areas for the species.
Highlights
When confronted with a lack of rigorous population estimates, status assessments such as the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species must rely on expert opinion of trends in population abundance or geographic range (Mace et al 2008)
The Leopard Cat may be threatened in many areas at a local scale, despite its global status on the IUCN Red List as Least Concern (Ross et al 2010)
We conducted multi-session analyses, comparing a constant model [D(.) g0(.) σ(.)] to models where D, g0, and σ parameters varied by the season of resource availability and habitat type. In addition to these session-covariates, we modelled the g0 parameter using the trap-covariates “rodent biomass” which corresponds to the actual rodent biomass (g/ha) from the nearest rodent live-trapping site and behavioral responses, using covariates “b”, “bk”, “B”, and “Bk”
Summary
When confronted with a lack of rigorous population estimates, status assessments such as the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species must rely on expert opinion of trends in population abundance or geographic range (Mace et al 2008). The Leopard Cat Prionailurus bengalensis, for example, is thought to be the most abundant small cat species in Asia due to its wide distribution and supposed tolerance towards human-modified landscapes (Nowell & Jackson 1996; Macdonald et al 2010; Ross et al 2010). The Leopard Cat may be threatened in many areas at a local scale, despite its global status on the IUCN Red List as Least Concern (Ross et al 2010)
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