Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, The Recanati-Kaplan Centre, Tubney, United Kingdom.
Ruaha Carnivore Project, Iringa, Tanzania.
PLoS One. 2021 Sep 10;16(9):e0256876. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0256876. eCollection 2021.
Africa is home to some of the world's most functionally diverse guilds of large carnivores. However, they are increasingly under threat from anthropogenic pressures that may exacerbate already intense intra-guild competition. Understanding the coexistence mechanisms employed by these species in human-impacted landscapes could help shed light on some of the more subtle ways in which humans may impact wildlife populations, and inform multi-species conservation planning. We used camera trap data from Tanzania's Ruaha-Rungwa landscape to explore temporal and spatiotemporal associations between members of an intact East African large carnivore guild, and determine how these varied across gradients of anthropogenic impact and protection. All large carnivores except African wild dog (Lycaon pictus) exhibited predominantly nocturnal road-travel behaviour. Leopard (Panthera pardus) appeared to employ minor temporal avoidance of lion (Panthera leo) in all sites except those where human impacts were highest, suggesting that leopard may have been freed up from avoidance of lion in areas where the dominant competitor was less abundant, or that the need for leopard to avoid humans outweighed the need to avoid sympatric competitors. Lion appeared to modify their activity patterns to avoid humans in the most impacted areas. We also found evidence of avoidance and attraction among large carnivores: lion and spotted hyaena (Crocuta crocuta) followed leopard; leopard avoided lion; spotted hyaena followed lion; and lion avoided spotted hyaena. Our findings suggest that large carnivores in Ruaha-Rungwa employ fine-scale partitioning mechanisms to facilitate coexistence with both sympatric species and humans, and that growing human pressures may interfere with these behaviours.
非洲是世界上功能最多样化的大型食肉动物群体之一的家园。然而，它们正日益受到人为压力的威胁，这些压力可能加剧已经激烈的群体内竞争。了解这些物种在受人类影响的景观中所采用的共存机制，可以帮助我们了解人类可能对野生动物种群产生影响的一些更微妙的方式，并为多物种保护规划提供信息。我们利用来自坦桑尼亚鲁阿哈-伦圭瓦景观的相机陷阱数据，探索了完整的东非大型食肉动物群体成员之间的时间和时空关联，并确定了这些关联如何在人为影响和保护的梯度上发生变化。除了非洲野狗（Lycaon pictus）之外，所有大型食肉动物都表现出主要的夜间道路旅行行为。除了人类影响最大的地区外，豹子（Panthera pardus）似乎在所有地区都避免了狮子（Panthera leo）的次要时间回避，这表明豹子可能在主要竞争者较少的地区摆脱了对狮子的回避，或者豹子避免人类的需要超过了避免同域竞争者的需要。狮子似乎在受影响最大的地区改变了它们的活动模式以避免人类。我们还发现了大型食肉动物之间的回避和吸引的证据：狮子和斑点鬣狗（Crocuta crocuta）跟随豹子；豹子避开狮子；斑点鬣狗跟随狮子；狮子避开斑点鬣狗。我们的研究结果表明，鲁阿哈-伦圭瓦的大型食肉动物采用了精细的分区机制，以促进与同域物种和人类的共存，并且不断增加的人为压力可能会干扰这些行为。
