Temporal partitioning by felids, dholes and their potential prey in northern Laos
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Temporal partitioning by felids, dholes and their potential prey in northern Laos Akchousanh Rasphone 1
&
Jan F. Kamler 1 & David W. Macdonald 1
Received: 31 March 2020 / Accepted: 23 July 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Temporal partitioning can allow sympatric carnivores to coexist, especially if overlap of other resources is high. Using camera trap data from 2013 to 2017, we investigated the temporal partitioning of a community of wild felids and a canid in Nam Et–Phou Louey National Protected Area, Laos, to determine the extent to which temporal avoidance might be facilitating coexistence of similarly sized carnivores. We also investigated temporal overlap of these carnivore species and their presumed main prey, to determine if their activity is likely most influenced by their prey or potential competitors. The dhole (Cuon alpinus) and clouded leopard (Neofelis nebulosa), the two largest carnivores, had low temporal overlap, and activity appeared to be synchronized with the main prey for dhole, but not clouded leopard. Thus, it was possible that clouded leopard used temporal partitioning to coexist with dhole. The temporal overlap of Asian golden cat (Catopuma temminckii) was high with clouded leopard and moderate with dhole, and overall appeared to be influenced most by its presumed prey species, rather than by its potential competitors. The two small felids had the least temporal overlap between any species, as the marbled cat (Pardofelis marmorata) was primarily diurnal whereas the leopard cat (Prionailurus bengalensis) was primarily nocturnal. Given that the two small felids reportedly have similar diets consisting of small rodents and birds, their temporal partitioning is likely to help facilitate their coexistence. For carnivore species in northern Laos that are most similar in body size and diet, temporal partitioning is likely to be an important mechanism of coexistence. Otherwise, temporal patterns appear to be synchronized with their main prey. Keywords Activity pattern . Asian golden cat . Clouded leopard . Dhole . Lao PDR . Leopard cat . Marbled cat
Introduction Species coexistence is one of the most complex topics in ecology (Gordon 2000). In principle, species that are ecologically similar cannot coexist in the same area (Hardin 1960). For such species to coexist, theory anticipates some degree of niche differentiation whereby interspecific competition is reduced (Schoener 1974). Niche differentiation of ecologically similar species may occur in one or more niche dimensions Communicated by: Krzysztof Schmidt Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s13364-020-00524-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Akchousanh Rasphone [email protected] 1
Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, Department of Zoology, Recanati-Kaplan Centre, University of Oxford, Tubney House, Abingdon Road, Tubney, Abingdon OX13 5QL, UK
which include space, time and food (Case and Gilpin 1974; Schoener 1974).
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