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Estimating occupancy of the Vulnerable northern tiger cat Leopardus tigrinus in Caatinga drylands

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Abstract

Understanding the distribution and habitat preference of threatened species is essential for their conservation. We conducted the first systematic camera trap survey of the Vulnerable northern tiger cat Leopardus tigrinus in Caatinga drylands (Brazil) and tested how its occupancy and detectability patterns are affected by environmental and anthropogenic factors. Species detection-non-detection data, obtained by 7263 camera-days distributed throughout 187 sampling sites on ten Caatinga landscapes, were used to evaluate species detectability and occupancy according to ten environmental and anthropogenic predictors. We built seven detection models and 30 hierarchical occupancy models that have been ranked based on the Akaike Information Criterion. The estimated average occupancy of 0.46 was 38% higher than the naïve occupancy rate (0.34). Species occupancy was higher in locations with greater forest cover and at greater distance to agrarian settlements. Hunting and persecution of northern tiger cats by residents and a possible reduction of their natural prey by hunting may explain the result. On the contrary, more forested environments may represent higher-quality habitats providing greater availability of prey and shelters and protection against anthropogenic threats and extreme temperatures. These results improve the understanding of the ecology of a threatened and poorly known small cat, and they can guide conservation actions such as the creation of dense forest protected areas and provide information for mitigating human-carnivore conflict.

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  • 04 October 2017

    The original version of this article, unfortunately, contained an error.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Wildlife Conservation Society—Brazil and the Centro de Pesquisas Ambientais do Nordeste (CEPAN) for the partnership; Tropical Conservation Act (TFCA) through Brazilian Biodiversity Fund (Call 04/2012) and Fundação Grupo Boticário de Proteção à Natureza (Project 0982-20132) for financial support; A.F. Oliveira, D. Valdenor, M.C. Bezerra, A. Galvão, F.P. Marinho, W. Pessoa, and T.G. Oliveira for assistance in the field or in the data analysis. We are immensely grateful to J.B. de Lima (seu João) and other local residents of the Caatinga for their hospitality and essential field assistance. We also thank M.P. Pinto and S. Astete, two anonymous reviewers, and associate editor for their valuable suggestions. PHM (130648/2013-2), CRF (305304/2013-5), and EMV (309458/2013-7) were funded by CNPq (Brazil) and, DB and MAF were funded by CAPES (Brazil).

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  1. Departamento de Ecologia, Centro de Biociências, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, RN, 59072-970, Brazil

    Paulo Henrique Marinho, Daniel Bezerra, Marina Antongiovanni, Carlos Roberto Fonseca & Eduardo Martins Venticinque

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  1. Paulo Henrique Marinho
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  3. Marina Antongiovanni
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Correspondence to Paulo Henrique Marinho.

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Communicated by: Krzysztof Schmidt

The original version of this article was revised: In the “Results” section originally reading “...significant lack of fit (test statistic = 144.83, p = 0.29)”, this should instead have read “...significant lack of fit “(c ^ = 0.95; Test statistic = 144.83, p = 0.29)”. [bold text used to highlight problem area]

An erratum to this article is available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s13364-017-0335-z.

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Marinho, P.H., Bezerra, D., Antongiovanni, M. et al. Estimating occupancy of the Vulnerable northern tiger cat Leopardus tigrinus in Caatinga drylands. Mamm Res 63, 33–42 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13364-017-0330-4

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