IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group - Digital Cat Library |
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| Elbroch, L.M.; Lendrum, P.E.; Allen, M.L.; Wittmer, H.U. | |
| Nowhere to hide: pumas, black bears and competition refuges | |
| 2014 Conference Proceeding | |
Interspecific competition is a significant influence on the diversity and membership of community assemblages, and a prevailing question is how competitive carnivores coexist without the dominant carnivore driving the subordinate competitor to local extinction. One hypothesis is that the subordinate carnivore requires and utilizes "competition refuges," where the influences of the dominant competitor are minimized. American black bears (_Ursus americanus_) are sympatric with pumas (_Puma concolor_) across most of the puma's range in North America, and a dominant scavenger that displace pumas from their kills. We tested for the effect of black bear kleptoparasitism on puma search time, handling time and kill rates in two study systems: western Colorado and northern California. Pumas exhibited increased kill rates and shorter handling times, and selected for smaller prey, when bears were active. Our Resource Selection Function analyses showed that when bears were active, they were as likely to find puma kills anywhere on the landscape. We concluded that during the bear season, pumas could not effectively hide from them; instead our results suggested that undiscovered puma kills were random events or due to some variable we did not test. Further, our findings suggested that bear kleptorparasitism may be driving higher puma kill rates in the warmer seasons where the two species overlap, which was implications for both carnivore and ungulate management, as well as potentially impacting puma fitness. |
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