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Species within the same ecological guild exhibit niche attributes that vary in association with their diet, spatial occupancy, and temporal activity to reduce competition. In the case of the tropical felid community, many species exhibit substantial overlap in these niche dimensions. Consequently, jaguars (Panthera onca) will sometimes kill the smaller ocelot (Leopardus pardalis) competitor in a phenomenon called intraguild predation (IGP), which is a major structuring force in tropical forests. We developed a spatially explicit agent-based model to understand IGP with the expectation that ocelots employ spatial avoidance strategies using available forest canopy as the more arboreal species. We parameterized model agents with realistic behaviors to replicate the real-world environment. Jaguar and ocelot agents were allowed to move, hunt, and reproduce with varying numbers, heights, and canopy thickness of trees as we recorded IGP events and ocelot canopy occupancy. We used structural equation modeling (SEM) to demonstrate how the number and height of trees significantly affected IGP occurrence. In accordance with our hypothesis, we found that the main contributor mediating coexistence between the two species was spatial avoidance of jaguars by ocelots by using available canopy refuges. Our modeling approach has broad application to different environments with similar intraguild interactions to predict the importance of forest structure and can inform policy directed toward forest management and habitat conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conservation requires both a needs assessment and prioritization scheme for planning and implementation. Range maps are critical for understanding and conserving biodiversity, but current range maps often omit content, negating important metrics of variation in populations and places. Here, we integrate a myriad of conditions that are spatially explicit across distributions of carnivores to identify gaps in capacity necessary for their conservation. Expanding on traditional gap analyses that focus almost exclusively on quantifying discordance in protected area coverage across a species' range, our work aggregates threat layers (e.g., drought, human pressures) with resources layers (e.g., protected areas, cultural diversity) to identify gaps in available conservation capacity (ACC) across ranges for 91 African carnivores. Our model indicated that all species have some portion of their range at risk of contraction, with an average of 15 percentage range loss. We found that the ACC differed based on body size and taxonomy. Results deviated from current perceptions of extinction risks for species with an International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) threat status of Least Concern and yielded insights for species categorized as Data Deficient. Our socio-ecological gap analysis presents a geospatial approach to inform decision-making and resource allocation in conservation. Ultimately, our work advances forecasting dynamics of species' ranges that are increasingly vital in an era of great socio-ecological change to mitigate human-wildlife conflict and promote inclusive carnivore conservation across geographies.

Predation is a fundamental ecological process that shapes communities and drives evolutionary dynamics. As the world rapidly urbanizes, it is critical to understand how human perturbations alter predation and meat consumption across taxa. We conducted a meta-analysis to quantify the effects of urban environments on three components of trophic ecology in predators: dietary species richness, dietary evenness and stable isotopic ratios (IRs) ( δ 13 C and δ 15 N IR). We evaluated whether the intensity of anthropogenic pressure, using the human footprint index (HFI), explained variation in effect sizes of dietary attributes using a meta-regression. We calculated Hedges' g effect sizes from 44 studies including 11 986 samples across 40 predatory species in 39 cities globally. The direction and magnitude of effect sizes varied among predator taxa with reptilian diets exhibiting the most sensitivity to urbanization. Effect sizes revealed that predators in cities had comparable diet richness, evenness and nitrogen ratios, though carbon IRs were more enriched in cities. We found that neither the 1993 nor 2009 HFI editions explained effect size variation. Our study provides, to our knowledge, the first assessment of how urbanization has perturbed predator-prey interactions for multiple taxa at a global scale. We conclude that the functional role of predators is conserved in cities and urbanization does not inherently relax predation, despite diets broadening to include anthropogenic food sources such as sugar, wheat and corn.