Patterns of species co-occurrence in a diverse Eastern Himalayan montane carnivore community

Abstract

We investigated patterns of species richness and co-occurrence in a montane carnivore community within a forested landscape in Bhutan that ranged in altitude from 2000 to 3760 m above sea level, and covered an area of approximately 140 km². Species were detected by unbaited camera traps set along animal trails and baited camera traps set away from trails. During the 6-month study, we gathered 1,329 independent mammal events from 67 camera-trap locations, of which, 145 (10.9%) were of 13 different carnivore species from five different families. Four carnivores were IUCN red-listed threatened species: tiger (<i>Panthera tigris</i>), marbled cat (<i>Pardofelis marmorata</i>), dhole (<i>Cuon alpinus</i>), and Asiatic black bear (<i>Ursus thibetanus</i>). For most camera stations where carnivores were detected, only a single carnivore species was captured on camera and there was evidence of temporal partitioning of activity between large (tiger and leopard, <i>Panthera pardus</i>) and small (marbled cat, golden cat <i>Catopuma temminckii</i>, and leopard cat <i>Prionailurus bengalensis</i>) felids, and between two common mustelids, the Siberian weasel (<i>Mustela sibirica</i>) and yellow-throated marten (<i>Martes flavigula</i>). Furthermore, we detected significant non-random spatial co-occurrence for most pairwise comparisons of carnivores despite the short timeframe of our study. This, combined with temporal patterns in activity, facilitates localized species co-occurrence in a diverse montane carnivore community.