Intraguild competition mediates human avoidance in an endangered African large carnivore.

The anthropogenic refuge (i.e. human shield) effect is a well-documented consequence of anthropogenic disturbance, whereby prey or subordinate competitors use human-dominated areas to avoid dominant predators. While this effect has been widely demonstrated for prey and to a lesser extent mesopredator species, it remains unknown whether it occurs among sympatric species within a top predator guild such as large carnivores. Moreover, there is a limited understanding of how intraguild competition may mediate carnivore responses to human disturbance. Here, we examined the spatial behaviour of two sympatric large carnivore species exhibiting intense intraguild competition-lions and African wild dogs-to investigate whether intraguild competition mediates large carnivore responses to human disturbance in support of the anthropogenic refuge hypothesis. We found that lions consistently avoided human-dominated areas. Similarly, we found that wild dogs generally avoided human-dominated areas, but this pattern reversed when in areas of high lion-encounter risk. Such results reveal that the ecology of fear, and in particular the anthropogenic refuge hypothesis, extends beyond traditional predator-prey relationships to competing top predators within a large carnivore guild. Furthermore, our study suggests that intraguild variation in responses to human disturbance may be an emerging niche axis that facilitates coexistence between competing species within the same guild.