Center for Integrated Spatial Research, Environmental Studies Department, University of California, Santa Cruz, California, 95064, USA.
Living with Lions, Mpala Research Centre, Nanyuki, 10400, Kenya.
Ecology. 2019 Apr;100(4):e02644. doi: 10.1002/ecy.2644. Epub 2019 Feb 28.
Co-occurrence with humans presents substantial risks for large carnivores, yet human-dominated landscapes are increasingly crucial to carnivore conservation as human land use continues to encroach on wildlife habitat. Flexibility in large carnivore behavior may be a primary factor mediating coexistence with people, allowing carnivores to calibrate their activity and habitat use to the perceived level of human risk. However, our understanding of how large carnivores adjust the timing and location of behaviors in response to variations in human activity across the landscape remains limited, impacting our ability to identify important habitat for populations outside of protected areas. Here we examine whether African lions (Panthera leo) modify their behavior and habitat use in response to risk of a human encounter, and whether behavior-specific habitat selection allows lions to access feeding opportunities in a human-dominated landscape in Kenya. We determined fine-scale behavioral states for lions using high-resolution GPS and accelerometer data, and then investigated behavior-specific habitat selection at multiple temporal and spatial scales (ranging from 15 minutes to 12 hours and from approximately 200 meters to several kilometers). We found that lions exhibit substantial differences in habitat selection with respect to humans based on behavioral state and time of day. During the day, when risk of human encounter is highest, lions avoided areas of high human use when resting, meandering, and feeding. However, lions specifically selected for habitat near people when feeding at night. Flexible habitat use by lions thus permits access to prey, which appear to concentrate in areas near humans. The importance of habitat near people for feeding was only apparent when analyses explicitly accounted for lion behavioral state and spatiotemporal scale, highlighting the necessity of incorporating such information when investigating human impacts on large carnivore habitat use. Our results support the contention that behavior-specific habitat selection promotes carnivore persistence in human-dominated landscapes, demonstrating the importance of considering not just whether but how large carnivores use habitat near humans when managing vulnerable populations.
与人共存会给大型食肉动物带来巨大风险，但随着人类土地利用不断侵占野生动物栖息地，受人类主导的景观对食肉动物保护变得越来越重要。大型食肉动物行为的灵活性可能是介导与人类共存的主要因素，使它们能够根据感知到的人类风险水平调整活动和栖息地利用。然而，我们对于大型食肉动物如何根据景观中人类活动的变化来调整行为的时间和地点的理解仍然有限，这影响了我们识别保护区外种群重要栖息地的能力。在这里，我们研究了非洲狮（ Panthera leo ）是否会根据与人类相遇的风险改变其行为和栖息地利用方式，以及行为特异性的栖息地选择是否使狮子能够在肯尼亚的人类主导景观中获得觅食机会。我们使用高分辨率 GPS 和加速度计数据确定了狮子的精细行为状态，然后在多个时间和空间尺度上（从 15 分钟到 12 小时，从大约 200 米到几公里）调查了行为特异性的栖息地选择。我们发现，狮子根据行为状态和一天中的时间表现出对人类的显著不同的栖息地选择。在白天，当与人相遇的风险最高时，狮子在休息、漫步和觅食时会避开高人类活动区域。然而，狮子在夜间专门选择靠近人类的栖息地觅食。狮子灵活的栖息地利用使它们能够获得猎物，这些猎物似乎集中在靠近人类的区域。只有在分析明确考虑到狮子的行为状态和时空尺度时，靠近人类的栖息地对觅食的重要性才会显现出来，这突出了在调查大型食肉动物对人类栖息地利用的影响时，纳入此类信息的必要性。我们的研究结果支持了行为特异性的栖息地选择促进了在人类主导的景观中食肉动物的生存的观点，证明了在管理易受伤害的种群时，不仅要考虑大型食肉动物是否利用了靠近人类的栖息地，还要考虑它们如何利用这些栖息地。
