Tiger, leopard, wild dog coexist with 'smart' adaptations

Despite being fierce competitors, three carnivores in wildlife reserves of the Western Ghats have developed "smart" adaptations to coexist, a study has revealed.
Such adaption would help save the three carnivores - tiger, leopard, and dhole (Asian wild dog).
The study conducted by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) showed that the three carnivores, which are in direct competition with each other, are living side by side with "surprisingly" little conflict.
Researchers said that usually, big cats and wild canids live in different locations to avoid each other.
Yet, in four relatively small reserves in the wildlife-rich Western Ghats region, WCS researchers have found that they are coexisting, despite competing for much of the same prey, including sambar deer, chital and pigs.

The researchers used dozens of non-invasive camera traps for sampling the entire population rather than tracking a handful of individuals, and recorded some 2,500 images of the three predators in action.

They found that in reserves with an abundance of prey, dholes, which are active during the day, did not come in much contact with the more nocturnal tigers and leopards.
But in the Bhadra Reserve where prey was scarcer, their active times overlapped, yet dholes still managed to avoid the big cats, while in Nagarahole, a park teeming with all three carnivores and their prey, leopards avoided tigers.
"These carnivores have developed smart adaptations to coexist, even while they exploit the same prey base. However, these mechanisms vary depending on density of prey resources and possibly other habitat features," the study said.

"Tigers, leopards and dholes are doing a delicate dance
in these protected areas, and all are managing to survive. We were surprised to see how each species has remarkably different adaptations to prey on different prey sizes, use different habitat types and be active at different times.
"Because of small and isolated nature of these high prey densities in these reserves, such adaptations are helpful for conservationists trying to save all three," said Ullas Karanth, WCS Director for Science in Asia and lead author of the study.
Researchers said that understanding these separate yet overlapping species' needs is critical to managing predators and prey in small reserves, which is increasingly the scenario of the future.

The authors say that by managing populations of flagship predators, like tigers, carefully overall biodiversity can also be conserved.
The study, titled 'Spatio-temporal interactions facilitate large carnivore sympatry across a resource gradient' authored by Karanth, Arjun Srivathsa, Divya Vasudev, Mahi Puri, Ravishankar Parameshwaran and Samba Kumar, appeared in the journal 'Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B - Biological Sciences' in February, 2017.