Does resource dispersion drive leopard habitat selection?

Bc. Kamila Jandová

Master's thesis

Abstract:

Leopards (Panthera pardus) are known to be obligate carnivores with large variety of prey species and unlike other large felids they can survive in human modified habitats. The main goal of this thesis was to answer the question: “Does resource dispersion drive leopard habitat selection?” To answer this question, possible prey species were firstly identified from camera trap data and then for each prey species the habitat suitability model was built using MaxEnt software. Output habitat suitability maps of prey species then served as the input data for modelling the leopard habitat suitability. The modelling was done by using eight potential prey species – common duiker, bushbuck, cape grysbok, porcupine, baboon, mongoose, genet and hare, together with environmental variables (land cover, aspect, slope, cattle and sheep density, river, roads, protected areas) and GPS collar data form leopards from the Western and Eastern Cape Provinces. The most important finding of this thesis was that habitat suitability of leopard is increasing with habitat suitability of prey species and that prey species have individually higher gains in predicting leopard occurrence than environmental variables and thus the hypothesis that resource dispersion has greater influence on leopard distribution than environmental factors was confirmed.This result has far reaching consequences for leopard conservation and wildlife management plans. More conservation actions should be done on protecting prey species in order to better maintain long term leopard survival.

Keywords

Panthera pardus, MaxEnt, wildlife conservation, prey species, South Africa, species distribution modelling

Language used: English

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 15. 5. 2020

Thesis defence

• Supervisor: prof. RNDr. Pavla Hejcmanová, Ph.D.

Czech University of Life Sciences Prague

Faculty of Tropical AgriSciences

Master programme / field:
Tropical Agriculture / Wildlife Management in the Tropics and Subtropics