Ecology Colloquium Series - Co-occurrence in the Order Carnivora: an analysis of the spatial distributions of sympatric carnivores worldwide

Courtney Davis, Penn State

February 15, 2017 @ 12:20 pm to 01:15 pm

104 Forest Resources Building

Event Website

Patterns in carnivore co-occurrence are little studied, despite the great importance these relationships pose for conservation and management strategies worldwide. Our goal was to investigate carnivore co-occurrence and determine what variables (e.g., body size, temporal activity, prey consumption, habitat use) may help explain the spatial distributions of sympatric carnivores. To draw broad conclusions about these processes, however, requires data for a number of species across large spatial scales, which is often difficult for a single study to accomplish due to resource constraints. Here, we utilized camera trap survey data from thirteen different study areas in twelve countries, which include observations of 96 mammalian carnivore species. Our objectives were to 1) develop a Bayesian formulation of the two-species occupancy model to quantify study-area-specific estimates of carnivore co-occurrence; and 2) identify the drivers of co-occurrence patterns to explain the spatial distributions of sympatric carnivores worldwide.

Contact

Dr. David Eissenstat
dme9@psu.edu