Predation of montane deserts ungulates by Asiatic CheetahAcinonyx jubatus venaticusin Central Iran

Assessing Asiatic cheetah’s individual diet using metabarcoding and its implication for conservation

“…We identified mouflon, ibex, cape hare, goitered gazelle, wild boar, and dromedary camel (in decreasing order of importance) as cheetah’s main food items. In comparison to other studies in Iran 23 – 26 , small livestock and jebeer were not detected in our results. This discrepancy could partially be due to misidentification of scat depositors in previous studies, as they were only based on the morphological identification of scats and could be partially due to low number of samples in this study, especially in Miandasht and Naybandan.…”

“…Habitat characteristics are likely to interplay with prey availability: in comparison to ibex, mouflon inhabits less rugged areas, therefore in Naybandan, where rolling hills are more common than mountainous areas and TRI is lower than in Yazd, predation on ibex was only observed once. On the other hand, in Yazd where mountainous areas are the most common habitat type and TRI is higher than all the areas (Table 1 ), the proportion of ibex consumption was higher than in Naybandan (RFO = 41 in Yazd and 7 in Naybandan), similar to previous studies 23 , 25 , 26 . Although cheetahs are able to hunt successfully in various habitats 12 , their morphological adaption suggests that their primary habitat was open plains and that they evolved to hunt steppe-dwelling prey by chasing them in high speed, especially in open habitats 13 , 50 , 51 .…”

“…Overall, mouflon was the most consumed food item in Iran. Likewise, other studies also identified mouflon as the most consumed food item in the Southern Subpopulations 23 , 25 , 26 . In Africa, cheetahs mainly consume steppe-dwelling gazelles, such as impala ( Aepyceros melampus ) and Thomson’s gazelle ( Eudorcas thomsonii ) 44 , 45 .…”

“…Male coalitions are able to kill larger preys 20 , solitary females usually hunt smaller preys 13 , 21 , but when they have dependent cubs, they may take larger prey items 22 . In Iran, a few regional studies assessing cheetah’s diet reported jebeer ( Gazella bennettii ), goitered gazelle ( Gazella subgutturosa ), mouflon ( Ovis vignei ), ibex ( Capra aegagrus ), wild boar ( Sus scrofa ) and livestock (sheep, goat and dromedary) as main prey items 23 – 26 . Given that one of the most important cheetah refuges in central Iran, the Touran Biosphere Reserve, is inhabited by more than 70,000 livestock (sheep and goat) during the grazing season, knowing whether cheetahs regularly predate on livestock is vital to mitigate possible human-wildlife conflicts.…”

Plant‐eating carnivores: Multispecies analysis on factors influencing the frequency of plant occurrence in obligate carnivores

“…This high degree of intraspecies variation is reflected as a wide range of HDI [0.003, 0.494] and CIs [0.022, 0.725] (Table 1 ). With the exception of one study on cheetahs ( Acinonyx jubatus ) in Iran (Zamani et al., 2017 ), no fruit was detected. Samples of Jaguarundi and pumas have been reported to contain 28% and 20% of Cyperaceae plants, respectively (Rocha‐Mendes et al., 2010 ).…”