Krishnendu Mondal, Pooja Chourasia, Shilpi Gupta, Kalyanasundaram Sankar, Qamar Qureshi,
Volume 4, Issue 2 (6-2022)
Abstract
In order to understand the generalist nature of leopards and whether they have any degree of specialization, a study on resource selection of the Indian Leopard (Panthera pardus fusca) was carried out in a tropical dry deciduous forest in Sariska Tiger Reserve, Western India from January 2007 to May 2011 with the use of camera trapping under the mark-recapture framework. Camera trapping was done in an intensive study area (230 km2) encompassing 200 camera locations on 85–130 occasions each year. In total, 40 Indian leopards were identified in the study area, of which seven individual leopards were selected for resource selection analysis. Resource selection by Indian leopards was investigated at two scales. First, habitat selection was studied using compositional analysis comparing habitat availability in the geographic range of all seven Indian leopards and utilization by the individual animals within it. The results showed that habitat selection was non-random (P< 0.001). The leopard’s preference of habitat selection was in the following order: Boswellia forest> Anogeissus forest> Acacia forest> Butea forest> Zizyphus forest> Barren land> Scrubland. Second, resource selection was studied through a generalized linear mixed-effect model (GLMM) comparing the resource availability and utilization in each leopard’s range. The results showed that leopards preferred Anogeissus dominated forest followed by Zizyphus mixed forest and scrubland. In addition, leopards preferred habitat with a higher encounter rate of sambar (Rusa unicolor) and chital (Axis axis) and to a lesser degree of use, habitat with a higher livestock encounter rate. The results revealed that Indian leopards showed a significant degree of preference for moderate to thick vegetation cover and wild prey species rather than areas with open forest types and domestic prey species.
|