Determinants of jaguar occupancy at the northern range edge
- PDF / 743,098 Bytes
- 11 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 20 Downloads / 183 Views
ORIGINAL PAPER
Determinants of jaguar occupancy at the northern range edge Stefano Anile 1
&
Evan Greenspan 1 & Clayton K. Nielsen 1,2
Received: 18 December 2019 / Accepted: 25 May 2020 # Mammal Research Institute, Polish Academy of Sciences, Białowieża, Poland 2020
Abstract Identifying factors promoting jaguar (Panthera onca) occupancy is crucial for planning effective conservation and management actions that can contribute to long-term population viability. We used camera-trapping and modeled factors affecting detection and occupancy for jaguars in Sonora at 149 sites during August–November 2008 and 2009. We measured 24 covariates presumed to affect detection (n = 6) and occupancy (n = 18) at camera sites, including sampling period and various habitat characteristics. We obtained 29 jaguar detections at 19 sites (naïve occupancy = 0.12) in 5455 trap-days of effort. Jaguar detectability (p = 0.16 ± 0.05) was negatively affected by human presence and varied by study year and sampling period. Jaguar occupancy (ψ = 0.30 ± 0.03) increased as prey richness, the abundance of calves of domestic cattle, and the proportion of subtropical vegetation increased. Jaguar occupancy was lower with increased abundance of adult cattle and peccary, and higher levels of fragmentation. Jaguar occupancy in Sonora was hence driven by a diverse combination of factors which should be considered when planning conservation actions. We suggest that managers mitigate the impact of livestock, especially on subtropical habitats, by employing appropriate fencing. Fencing may increase wildlife prey for jaguars, thereby reducing calf depredation by jaguars, while concurrently protecting habitat from overgrazing. Furthermore, providing financial support for ecotourism and compensation for depredation to offset potential jaguar impacts should be considered for jaguar conservation in Sonora. Keywords Camera-trapping . Livestock . Fragmentation . Occupancy . Panthera
Introduction The role of large carnivores in ecosystems is well known to ecologists and conservationists (Ripple et al. 2014; Wolf and Communicated by: Krzysztof Schmidt Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s13364-020-00511-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Stefano Anile [email protected]; [email protected] Evan Greenspan [email protected] Clayton K. Nielsen [email protected] 1
Cooperative Wildlife Research Laboratory, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL 62901, USA
2
Department of Forestry, Center for Ecology, Southern Illinois University, 1205 Lincoln Drive-MC 4411, Carbondale, IL 62901, USA
Ripple 2017). Large carnivores provide benefits for humans, including ecotourism (Dickman et al. 2011) and control of vector-borne diseases among wildlife (Hegglin et al. 2015) and livestock (Tanner et al. 2019), which may then impact human health (Levi et al. 2012). Large carnivores, such as leopards (Panthera pardus), were also suggested to reduce the nuisance of stray
Data Loading...
