- Title
- Tradeoffs between resources and risks shape the responses of a large carnivore to human disturbance.
- Creator
- Mills, Kirby L.; Belant, Jerrold L.; Spong, Göran; Suraci, Justin P.; Van der Weyde, Leanne K.; Wilmers, Christopher C.; Carter, Neil H.; Sanders, Nathan J.; Beukes, Maya; Dröge, Egil; Everatt, Kristoffer T.; Fyumagwa, Robert; Green, David S.; Hayward, Matt W.; Holekamp, Kay E.; Radloff, F. G. T.
- Relation
- Communications Biology Vol. 6, Issue 1, no. 986
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s42003-023-05321-z
- Publisher
- Nature Publishing Group
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2023
- Description
- Wide-ranging carnivores experience tradeoffs between dynamic resource availabilities and heterogeneous risks from humans, with consequences for their ecological function and conservation outcomes. Yet, research investigating these tradeoffs across large carnivore distributions is rare. We assessed how resource availability and anthropogenic risks influence the strength of lion (Panthera leo) responses to disturbance using data from 31 sites across lions' contemporary range. Lions avoided human disturbance at over two-thirds of sites, though their responses varied depending on site-level characteristics. Lions were more likely to exploit human-dominated landscapes where resources were limited, indicating that resource limitation can outweigh anthropogenic risks and might exacerbate human-carnivore conflict. Lions also avoided human impacts by increasing their nocturnal activity more often at sites with higher production of cattle. The combined effects of expanding human impacts and environmental change threaten to simultaneously downgrade the ecological function of carnivores and intensify human-carnivore conflicts, escalating extinction risks for many species.
- Subject
- behavioural ecology; conservation biology; animals; cattle; humans; SDG 15; Sustainable Development Goals
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1493762
- Identifier
- uon:53642
- Identifier
- ISSN:2399-3642
- Rights
- © The Author(s) 2023. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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