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Fish on the platter! Dietary habits of fishing cats (Prionailurus viverrinus) in the Godavari Delta, India

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Abstract

The threatened fishing cat (Prionailurus viverrinus) is an elusive and medium-sized cat that is adapted to mangroves, swamps, wetlands and riverine habitats. A close look at the literature indicates that fishing cats are piscivorous; however, this is based on very few studies. Understanding the patterns of resource utilisation by species is crucial for assessing their role in ecosystems and in ensuring their conservation. Therefore, our study presents insights into fishing cat feeding patterns from mangroves of the Godavari delta, Andhra Pradesh, India. We collected 303 putative fishing cat scats and conducted diet analysis using 120 genetically identified scats. Our analysis revealed that fish was the most important prey for fishing cats in the study area (61.6% in frequency of occurrence), followed by crabs (30%) and rodents (28.3%). The prey composition did not vary significantly between the three seasons but there were differences between the survey years. The niche breadth also varied across the three seasons, with lowest niche breadth estimated in summers (0.36) with highest contribution of fish in the diet and highest in winters (0.75) probably due to increased contribution of other prey items along with fish. Our results suggest that long-term conservation and survival of the fishing cats depends on fish populations, which are the main prey of the species and thus recommend the need to protect the fish populations in the Godavari delta and the surrounding riverine habitats. Given the importance of fish to the diet of the fishing cat, the health of waterways throughout their distribution must be one of the focal strategies of conservation action.

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Data Availability

The datasets used and /or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon resonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This study was part of a UNDP – GEF – MoEF &CC—APFD -Wildlife Institute of India project. Giridhar Malla was also supported by MbZ Species Conservation Fund (Project No. 162512790) and WCN Scholarship (2018) for the “Godavari Fishing Cat Project.” The authors would like to thank the Director and Dean of the Wildlife Institute of India for providing their support in terms of infrastructure and guidance. The authors would also like to acknowledge the support of the Andhra Pradesh Forest Department, who provided us with the necessary permissions and support to carry out the study. We would personally thank our field guide Prasad Pinapotu, without whom this work would not have been possible. We thank both the reviewers and the editor for their valuable comments, which helped us to substantially improve our manuscript.

Funding

Global Environment Facility and Mohammed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund (ID: 162512790).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, India

    Giridhar Malla, Paromita Ray, Yellapu Srinivas & Kuppusamy Sivakumar

  2. Department of Environmental Sciences, Andhra University, Visakhapatnam, India

    Giridhar Malla & T Byragi Reddy

  3. Progenics Laboratories Pvt. Ltd, Hyderabad, India

    Yellapu Srinivas

  4. Department of Life Sciences, Biotechnology, Indian Academy Degree College -Autonomous, Bengaluru, India

    Sudhakar Malla

  5. Conservation Science Research Group, School of Environmental and Life Science, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW, Australia

    Matt Hayward

  6. Centre for African Conservation Science, Nelson Mandela University, Gqeberha, South Africa

    Matt Hayward

  7. Department of Ecology and Environmental Sciences, School of Life Sciences, Pondicherry University, Pondicherry, India

    Kuppusamy Sivakumar

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  1. Giridhar Malla
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Correspondence to Giridhar Malla.

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Malla, G., Ray, P., Srinivas, Y. et al. Fish on the platter! Dietary habits of fishing cats (Prionailurus viverrinus) in the Godavari Delta, India. Mamm Res 69, 221–230 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13364-023-00731-0

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