Abstract
The co-occurrence of felid species in Southeast Asia provides an unusual opportunity to investigate guild structure and the factors controlling it. Using camera-trap data, we quantified the space use, temporal activity, and multi-dimensional niche overlap of the tiger, clouded leopard, Asiatic golden cat, marbled cat, and leopard cat in the Htamanthi Wildlife Sanctuary, Myanmar. We hypothesised that the spatio-temporal behaviour of smaller cats would reflect the avoidance of the larger cats, and similar-sized guild members would partition their niches in space or time to reduce resource competition. Our approach involved modelling single-species occupancy, pairwise spatial overlap using Bayesian inference, activity overlap with kernel density estimation, and multivariate analyses. The felid assembly appeared to be partitioned mainly on a spatial rather than temporal dimension, and no significant evidence of mesopredator release was observed. Nonetheless, the temporal association between the three mesopredators was inversely related to the similarity in their body sizes. The largest niche differences in the use of space and time occurred between the three smallest species. This study offers new insight into carnivore guild assembly and adds substantially to knowledge of five of the least known felids of conservation concern.
Highlights
The science of ecology is underpinned by niche theory [1]
Our study provided insights into the interaction of felid guild assemblage comprising different sized species in spatial and temporal dimension for the first time in the region surrounding Myanmar
We found strong support for niche separation occurring mainly in the spatial niche dimension from our hypothesis tests, the largest displacement between the marbled cat and golden cat
Summary
The science of ecology is underpinned by niche theory [1]. This theory postulates that the distribution, abundance, and survival of organisms is dictated by their fundamental niche, which is defined as an area of essential resources within an n-dimensional hypervolume of multiple environmental variables (e.g., temperature, habitat type, elevation, etc.) and its realised niche, which is the portion of the fundamental niche occupied, which is influenced by interaction with other species [2,3]. Quantifying ecological niches, even for well-studied species, is rarely straightforward [4]. Species interactions among predator–prey and competitor species networks may influence species distribution and abundance and interact strongly with environmental dimensions of the ecological niche. A general postulate of niche theory is that the coexistence of ecologically similar species requires a difference in their realized niches [5]
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