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Ecology of large felids and their prey in small reserves of the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico
Jaguars and pumas are top-predator species in the Neotropics that are threatened by habitat destruction, illegal poaching of their body parts and their favored prey, and by the human–wildlife conflicts that arise when predators attack livestock. Much of the remaining felid habitat in the Americas is...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Oxford University Press
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9936502/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36818686 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jmammal/gyac090 |
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author | Piña-Covarrubias, Evelyn Chávez, Cuauhtémoc Chapman, Mark A Morales, Montserrat Elizalde-Arellano, Cynthia Doncaster, C Patrick |
author_facet | Piña-Covarrubias, Evelyn Chávez, Cuauhtémoc Chapman, Mark A Morales, Montserrat Elizalde-Arellano, Cynthia Doncaster, C Patrick |
author_sort | Piña-Covarrubias, Evelyn |
collection | PubMed |
description | Jaguars and pumas are top-predator species in the Neotropics that are threatened by habitat destruction, illegal poaching of their body parts and their favored prey, and by the human–wildlife conflicts that arise when predators attack livestock. Much of the remaining felid habitat in the Americas is in protected nature reserves that are too small and isolated to support local populations. Surrounding forests therefore play a vital role in felid conservation. Successful long-term conservation of these two felids requires evidence-based knowledge of their biological and ecological requirements. We studied population distributions of jaguars and pumas and their prey in and between two small, private reserves of the Northern Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico, with areas of 25 and 43 km(2). During 2 years of camera trapping (2015 and 2016), we detected 21 jaguars, from which we estimated an average space requirement of 28–45 km(2)/individual. Dietary niche overlap exceeded random expectation. The most frequently occurring prey items in jaguar and puma diets were collared peccary and deer. Jaguar also favored nine-banded armadillos and white-nosed coati, while puma favored canids. Both felids avoided ocellated turkey. Overall, diet of jaguars was less species-rich, but similar in niche breadth, to that of pumas. A fluid use of space by both species, in 2015 tending toward mutual attraction and in 2016 toward partial exclusion of pumas by jaguars, combined with the high dietary overlap, is consistent with a dominance hierarchy facilitating coexistence. Jaguars and pumas favor the same prey as the people in local communities who hunt, which likely will intensify human–wildlife impacts when prey become scarce. We conclude that even small reserves play an important role in increasing the continuity of habitat for prey and large felids, whose generalist habits suppress interspecific competition for increasingly limiting prey that are largely shared between them and humans. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9936502 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | Oxford University Press |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-99365022023-02-18 Ecology of large felids and their prey in small reserves of the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico Piña-Covarrubias, Evelyn Chávez, Cuauhtémoc Chapman, Mark A Morales, Montserrat Elizalde-Arellano, Cynthia Doncaster, C Patrick J Mammal Feature Articles Jaguars and pumas are top-predator species in the Neotropics that are threatened by habitat destruction, illegal poaching of their body parts and their favored prey, and by the human–wildlife conflicts that arise when predators attack livestock. Much of the remaining felid habitat in the Americas is in protected nature reserves that are too small and isolated to support local populations. Surrounding forests therefore play a vital role in felid conservation. Successful long-term conservation of these two felids requires evidence-based knowledge of their biological and ecological requirements. We studied population distributions of jaguars and pumas and their prey in and between two small, private reserves of the Northern Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico, with areas of 25 and 43 km(2). During 2 years of camera trapping (2015 and 2016), we detected 21 jaguars, from which we estimated an average space requirement of 28–45 km(2)/individual. Dietary niche overlap exceeded random expectation. The most frequently occurring prey items in jaguar and puma diets were collared peccary and deer. Jaguar also favored nine-banded armadillos and white-nosed coati, while puma favored canids. Both felids avoided ocellated turkey. Overall, diet of jaguars was less species-rich, but similar in niche breadth, to that of pumas. A fluid use of space by both species, in 2015 tending toward mutual attraction and in 2016 toward partial exclusion of pumas by jaguars, combined with the high dietary overlap, is consistent with a dominance hierarchy facilitating coexistence. Jaguars and pumas favor the same prey as the people in local communities who hunt, which likely will intensify human–wildlife impacts when prey become scarce. We conclude that even small reserves play an important role in increasing the continuity of habitat for prey and large felids, whose generalist habits suppress interspecific competition for increasingly limiting prey that are largely shared between them and humans. Oxford University Press 2022-11-09 /pmc/articles/PMC9936502/ /pubmed/36818686 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jmammal/gyac090 Text en © The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Society of Mammalogists. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.com |
spellingShingle | Feature Articles Piña-Covarrubias, Evelyn Chávez, Cuauhtémoc Chapman, Mark A Morales, Montserrat Elizalde-Arellano, Cynthia Doncaster, C Patrick Ecology of large felids and their prey in small reserves of the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico |
title | Ecology of large felids and their prey in small reserves of the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico |
title_full | Ecology of large felids and their prey in small reserves of the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico |
title_fullStr | Ecology of large felids and their prey in small reserves of the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico |
title_full_unstemmed | Ecology of large felids and their prey in small reserves of the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico |
title_short | Ecology of large felids and their prey in small reserves of the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico |
title_sort | ecology of large felids and their prey in small reserves of the yucatán peninsula of mexico |
topic | Feature Articles |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9936502/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36818686 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jmammal/gyac090 |
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