Facilitation of a free-roaming apex predator in working lands: evaluating factors that influence leopard spatial dynamics and prey availability in a South African biodiversity hotspot.

ABSTRACT: Apex predators ideally require vast intact spaces that support sufficient prey abundances to sustain them. In a developing world, however, it is becoming extremely difficult to maintain large enough areas to facilitate apex predators outside of protected regions. Free-roaming leopards (Panthera pardus) are the last remaining apex predator in the Greater Cape Floristic Region, South Africa, and face a multitude of threats attributable to competition for space and resources with humans. Using camera-trap data, we investigated the influence of anthropogenic land modification on leopards and the availability of their natural prey species in two contrasting communities-primarily protected (Cederberg) and agriculturally transformed (Piketberg). Potential prey species composition and diver

SUBMITTER: Greyling E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9884037 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature