The Influence of Prey, Pastoralism and Poaching on the Hierarchical Use of Habitat by an Apex Predator

Abstract

As an apex predator, habitat selection by African lions, Panthera leo, is primarily determined by bottom-up processes; however, increasing anthropogenic pressures may alter these relationships. Using camera traps and track surveys in the Limpopo National Park, Mozambique, we collected detection/non-detection data of lions and their prey and combined these with occurrence data on bushmeat poaching activities and spatial data on agro-pastoralist land use and other landscape features. We used hierarchical modelling within an occupancy framework to determine the relative influences of ecological variables on resource use and non-use by lions at two spatial scales. Habitat use by lions was most strongly influenced by the occurrence of their preferred prey across both spatial scales. However, lions were strongly negatively predicted by bushmeat poaching at the finer spatial scale and generally negatively predicted by agro-pastoralist activities at the coarser scale. Restricting our analysis to the home-range scale would have greatly underestimated the impact of bushmeat poaching on the ecology of lions. The results of our study illustrate the trophic dependency of prey resources to lions and the importance of considering scale when investigating species habitat use. Importantly, our study also demonstrates the limiting influence of bushmeat poaching on the use of habitat by an apex predator.

Impact of prey occupancy and other ecological and anthropogenic factors on tiger distribution in Thailand's western forest complex

“…Our study is the first modeling effort to incorporate occupancy of prey species as a covariate in tiger occupancy models. Despite widespread use of occupancy modeling, very little research has been published on how prey occupancy influences the distribution of large carnivores (Andresen, Everatt, & Somers, ; Everatt, Andresen, & Somers, ). Incorporation of prey variables into models has often been done using indices such as overall prey biomass or density (Robinson, Bustos, & Roemer, ), general presence or absence of prey (Alexander, Gopalaswamy, Shi, Hughes, & Riordan, ; Vinitpornsawan, ), relative abundance indices (Chanchani, Noon, Bailey, & Warrier, ), or photo‐trap rates (Sunarto et al, ).…”

“…Tick marks on the X-axis show density of data values in 64 km 2 grid cell. See Supporting Information Tables 1 and 2 for description of covariates of large carnivores (Andresen, Everatt, & Somers, 2014;Everatt, Andresen, & Somers, 2015). Incorporation of prey variables into models has often been done using indices such as overall prey biomass or density (Robinson, Bustos, & Roemer, 2014), general presence or absence of prey (Alexander, Gopalaswamy, Shi, Hughes, & Riordan, 2016;Vinitpornsawan, 2013), relative abundance indices (Chanchani, Noon, Bailey, & Warrier, 2016), or photo-trap rates (Sunarto et al, 2015).…”

Determinants of Distribution Patterns and Management Needs in a Critically Endangered Lion Panthera leo Population

“…We predicted that covariates in the Biotic category associated with landscape productivity (e.g., greater precipitation, vegetation cover, interannual variation in vegetation, and water availability) would be associated with greater lion occupancy ( Table 1), as evidenced by earlier studies (Loveridge and Canney, 2009;Everatt et al, 2015).…”

“…We assessed how a suite of landscape variables related to biotic factors, management, and human impacts influence and potentially limit lion distribution across WAP. We hypothesized that in WAP, as has been found elsewhere, lion occurrence would be influenced by processes related to habitat productivity (e.g., Hopcraft et al, 2005;Loveridge and Canney, 2009;Everatt et al, 2015), as well as pressures related to illegal activities in the PA (e.g., Everatt et al, 2014), or the inability of wildlife authorities to fully mitigate the latter due to limited management budgets or patrol staff (Packer et al, 2013;Henschel et al, 2014).…”

Lions and leopards coexist without spatial, temporal or demographic effects of interspecific competition

“…Most (>90%) human captures by our camera traps were of tourist vehicles, which can deter poachers (Laurance, ). As leopards are increasingly being targeted by poachers for their skins for ceremonial wear (Stein et al., ), leopards may avoid poachers by favouring areas with high tourism traffic (Cromsigt et al., ; Everatt, Andresen, & Somers, ). Lions may not need to adopt the same strategy as they are currently less desired by poachers (although this may change as demand for lion bone increases; Williams, Newton, Loveridge, & Macdonald, ).…”