Predator in proximity: how does a large carnivore respond to anthropogenic pressures at fine-scales? Implications for interface area management

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Biodiversity and Conservation

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Introduction

Materials and Methods

Research approval, permission and ethics statement

Study area

Field methods

Analytical methods

Spatio-temporal activity of tigers with respect to human disturbance

Proportion of area occupied, probability and intensity of space use
Modelling temporal activity and overlap analysis

Movement range and patterns using GPS telemetry

Modelling depredation risk and assessing predator’s influence

Results

Occupancy patterns and spatial variability along a disturbance gradient

Temporal activity: disturbance effects and overlap trends

Differential movement patterns near human settlements

Conflict probability prediction and risk mapping

Discussion

Tiger space use shifts in response to disturbance

Temporal activity influenced by nature of disturbance

Movement patterns to negotiate human-dominated areas

Reconciling with livestock depredation

Conclusions

Supplemental Information

Distribution of camera traps and tiger photo-captures in each distance class.

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Summary of camera trap captures.

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95% confidence interval estimates of covariates in the top models considered for predicting probability of space use by tigers.

The models are arranged in increasing order of ΔAICc from left to right.

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Watson’s goodness of fit test for von Mises distribution and isotropy for tiger activity from Dec-Feb and March-April.

Each set of samples were first checked for uniformity and if they represented von Mises distribution using Watson’s Goodness-of-Fit test. If the sample fit the distribution, their bias-corrected concentration parameters (K) were checked. If K > 1, a parametric test could be used to detect the difference in the mean. None of the sample set fit the criteria, and hence, a (Fisher’s) non-parametric test for the median shift in tiger activity was used instead of a parametric test. See Pewsey et al. (2013) for details of test assumptions and execution.

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Bayesian circular models considered to test the effect of disturbance factors on tigers’ temporal activity.

Parameter estimates (and their standard deviations generated using 10,000 Markov chain Monte Carlo iterations) are given in each cell when they were present in the model.

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Median and mean, along with their median absolute deviance (MAD) and standard deviation (SD) of tigers’ distance to villages in different diel periods.

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Median displacement (metres/hour) and median absolute deviance (MAD) of tigers for different diel periods.

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95% confidence interval estimates of covariates in the top models considered for predicting the probability of livestock depredation by tigers.

The models are arranged in increasing order of ΔAICc from left to right.

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Marginal effect response curves of predictors influencing tigers’ detection probability.

The shaded region represents the 95% confidence interval of the response curve.

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Box-whisker plots of tiger RAI (y-axis) and unique individuals (secondary y-axis), and segmented bar chart of tiger RAI sex ratio (secondary x-axis) in increasing distance classes from villages.

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Temporal activity patterns and photo-captures of livestock, humans, wild prey and tigers at each distance class.

(A) (top) Activity overlap plots and (B) (bottom) bar chart of average independent photo-captures per camera trap of each species. The 95% confidence intervals of activity overlap estimate (indicated in parenthesis) are adjusted for bootstrap bias and were calculated with 10,000 resamples. Plotting and analysis of temporal overlap between tiger & livestock were avoided for the 3-4 km distance class due to very low livestock captures (n = 6).

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Movement patterns of the collared tigers within the study area.

(A) (top) GPS locations, AKDE home ranges and (B) (bottom) box-whisker plots of displacement (in step-lengths: metre/hour) of the tigers at increasing distance classes from villages. Axis break has been used on the vertical axis to deal with the large number of outliers for clear visualisation and representation of the trends. The percentage values given in the boxplots are the proportion of GPS locations of the collared tigers, and the dot plots within the boxplots represent their distribution in day and night in the respective distance classes.

Base layer credits: CartoDEM; FROM-GLC10.

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Marginal effect response curves of covariates in the best-fit binomial GLM to predict livestock depredation.

The shaded region indicates the 95% confidence interval of the response curve.

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ROC curve of the best-fit binomial GLM to predict livestock depredation in the study area.

AUC = 0.7952

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Tiger conflict locations from compensation records and site inspections, used for livestock depredation risk modelling.

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Grid covariates that were used as predictors in different models.

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Tiger detection history used for occupancy analysis.

100 occasions. 1 occasion = 1 day.

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Tiger temporal activity used in circular models.

Time in radians, scaled between 0 and 2π, for each photo-capture of tigers.

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Tiger GPS telemetry data, used in movement pattern analyses.

All timestamps are in UTC. Geographical coordinates of the locations are withheld due to the protected status of the study species. However, variables such as distance to villages, step length, etc., are given and can be used to replicate the study results.

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Additional Information and Declarations

Competing Interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Author Contributions

Manu Mohan conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, prepared figures and/or tables, authored or reviewed drafts of the article, conducted field work, and approved the final draft.

Sambandam Sathyakumar conceived and designed the experiments, authored or reviewed drafts of the article, and approved the final draft.

Ramesh Krishnamurthy conceived and designed the experiments, authored or reviewed drafts of the article, secured the funding and held the administrative role of the project, and approved the final draft.

Animal Ethics

The following information was supplied relating to ethical approvals (i.e., approving body and any reference numbers):

The GPS telemetry data used in the study were borrowed from the ongoing landscape project, as part of which two tigers were collared following strict animal ethics and protocols approved by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), with permission from the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC-Wildlife Division), Government of India (F. No. 1-19/2019 WL, dated 15/09/2020).

Ethics

The following information was supplied relating to ethical approvals (i.e., approving body and any reference numbers):

The research was reviewed and approved by the Faculty of Wildlife Sciences as part of the Post-graduate programme in Wildlife Science at the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun (WII/AC/2019-21/Dissertation/XVII M.Sc, dated 24/11/2020).

Field Study Permissions

The following information was supplied relating to field study approvals (i.e., approving body and any reference numbers):

Madhya Pradesh Forest Department (MPFD) issued all necessary permission for conducting fieldwork in Panna Tiger Reserve (Letter issued by the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Wildlife)/GEN./15-20/6043, dated 01/09/2018).

Data Availability

The following information was supplied regarding data availability:

Raw data are available in the Supplemental Files.

Funding

This study was financially supported by the dissertation grant of the Post-graduate Programme in Wildlife Science, Wildlife Institute of India (No. WII/AC/2019-21/Dissertation/XVII M.Sc), and the project: ‘Development of Landscape Management Plan and Monitoring with reference to Ken–Betwa River Link Project in Panna Tiger Reserve, Madhya Pradesh’, funded by the National Water Development Agency, Government of India (No. WII/KR/PROJECT/PLMP/2017-18/F(1)). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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