Andrew Kittle

The Wilderness & Wildlife Conservation Trust

Apex carnivores are integral to effectively functioning ecosystems, but their populations are declining worldwide. To ensure the long‐term viability of top carnivore populations, it is important to understand their ecology and behavior throughout their remaining range, including in protected areas, as these can act as vital refuges. In Sri Lanka, a...

Apex predators fulfil potentially vital ecological roles. Typically wide-ranging and charismatic, they can also be useful surrogates for biodiversity preservation, making their targeted conservation imperative. The Sri Lankan leopard (Panthera pardus kotiya), an endangered, endemic sub-species, is the island’s apex predator. Of potential keystone i...

Data on the population density, spatial organization, diet and behaviour of a protected, arid zone Sri Lankan leopard (Panthera pardus kotiya) population are presented, and discussed in the context of the influence of dominant intra-guild competition. Spatially explicit density estimates were based on direct observations and remote camera images of...

Background: Where apex predators move on the landscape influences ecosystem structure and function and is therefore key to effective landscape-level management and species-specific conservation. However the factors underlying predator distribution patterns within functional ecosystems are poorly understood. Predator movement should be sensitive to...

1.Although local variation in territorial predator density is often correlated with habitat quality, the causal mechanism underlying this frequently observed association is poorly understood and could stem from facultative adjustment in either group size or territory size. 2.To test between these alternative hypotheses we used a novel statistical f...

Biodiversity targets, under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework , prioritize both conservation area and their effectiveness. The effective management of protected areas (PAs) depends greatly on law enforcement resources, which is often tasked to rangers. We addressed economic aspects of law enforcement by rangers working in terrestri...

Livestock depredation by wild carnivores threatens carnivore populations and livestock-dependent human communities globally. Understanding local attitudes towards carnivores can inform strategies to improve coexistence. In Sri Lanka, the dairy industry is expanding, creating a need for proactive conflict mitigation. Livestock depredation by the End...

Predation is a fundamental ecological process influencing the distribution and abundance of animal populations and underlying how prey species perceive risk. The predation process is composed of four sequential stages – search, encounter, attack and kill – each of which has been used to describe risk across the landscape. Here, we used direct obser...

Large carnivores are vital for effectively functioning ecosystems yet globally their populations are declining, with habitat loss, prey depletion and human persecution the leading causes. Sri Lanka's apex predator, the leopard, numbers < 1000 mature individuals and has lost > 1/3 of its historic range. Ongoing human-induced leopard mortality occurs...

Leopard (Panthera parduskotiya) remains the top carnivore in central highlands of Sri Lanka. Human-leopard interactions amplified due to the increased sharing of leopard habitats by humans, especially in plantation landscapes in central highlands. Increased media reporting and community awareness may also be contributing to the knowledge and report...

One of the most challenging tasks in wildlife conservation and management is to clarify how spatial variation in land cover due to anthropogenic disturbance influences wildlife demography and long‐term viability. To evaluate this, we compared rates of survival and population growth by woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) from 2 study sites...

IUCN Red List status assessment for the Sri Lankan leopard (P.p.kotiya)

Apex predators are key to functioning ecosystems but globally their numbers are in steep decline due to habitat loss and fragmentation as well as human exploitation. Amongst top predators, leopards have only recently been recognized as undergoing extensive range loss across sub-species. The distribution and protected area status of the Sri Lanka...

Biodiversity loss is accelerating globally and traditional conservation actions, whereby targeted research is conducted within a framework shaped by government policy and is reliant on governmental support and/or funding by large, often top-heavy conservation agencies, may be inadequate to address observed rapid declines. This may therefore neces...

Context: Differences in body size and mouth morphologies influence dietary resource separation among savanna ungulates, and this influences their distribution across landscape. Aim: The aim was to understand the influence of body size and mouth morphology differences on both diet and patch selection by ungulate species in western Serengeti. Two hyp...

The geographic distribution and habitat association of most mammalian polymorphic phenotypes are still poorly known, hampering assessments of their adaptive significance. Even in the case of the black panther, an iconic melanistic variant of the leopard (Panthera pardus), no map exists describing its distribution. We constructed a large database of...

Panthera pardus location records used in the present study. (PDF)

Environmental predictors used in the initial analysis and selected with Pearson's test (in red). (PDF)

Base map for the CSR test. (PDF)

New distributional map for Panthera pardus. Location records comprising our full database are indicated, and overlaid on the present IUCN range map along with additional areas of occurrence documented in this study. Subspecies partitions proposed by Uphyrkina et al. (2001) are also indicated, including summaries of the number records of each colora...

Response curves observed in the Maxent analysis for each environmental predictor used to construct the non-melanistic (control) model. (PDF)

Response curves observed in the Maxent analysis for each environmental predictor used to construct the melanistic model. (PDF)

Graphs depicting the results of the suitability test comparing the melanistic and non-melanistic models across all the location records in our database (p<0.001). Mean suitability in the non-melanistic model = 0.594 (standard deviation = 0.167); mean suitability in the melanistic model = 0.192 (standard deviation = 0.280). (PDF)

In-depth analysis of environmental variables and their relationship with melanism in leopards. The top three graphs (panel A) depict the relationships between the two variables identified as having differential effects on the two phenotypes (see S6 Fig), as well as their relationship with a measure of cover (vegetation index NDVI). For each graph,...

Detailed maps showing the geographic distribution of records comprising our database of melanistic and non-melanistic leopards, overlaid on the terrestrial biomes (based on Olson et al. 2001). Each major geographic region representing a leopard subspecies is shown in a separate panel. (PDF)

Detailed assessment of the 12 bioclimatic predictors selected for inclusion in the Maxent modeling of the two coloration phenotypes, after removing the variables showing the most correlation relative to all others (see Methods). A) Relative importance of each variable for modeling habitat suitability, depicted separately for three geographic scales...

Predator space use influences ecosystem dynamics, and a fundamental goal assumed for a foraging predator is to maximize encounter rate with prey. This can be achieved by disproportionately utilizing areas of high prey density or, where prey are mobile and therefore spatially unpredictable, utilizing patches of their prey's preferred resources. A th...

The Sri Lankan leopard, Panthera pardus kotiya, is distributed throughout most of the country with numbers estimated to be between 700 and 950 individuals (Kittle and Watson, 2008) and a stable population. Existing data suggest that the Bogawanthalawa Valley in the Central Hill area of Sri Lanka has a high rate of human-leopard interaction. This st...

The PREDICTS project—Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems (www.predicts.org.uk)—has collated from published studies a large, reasonably representative database of comparable samples of biodiversity from multiple sites that differ in the nature or intensity of human impacts relating to land use. We have used t...

Figure S1: Database schema. Diversity data in yellow, GIS data in green and Catalogue of Life data in blue. The diversity tables datasource, study, site, measuredtaxon and diversitymeasurement follow the structure described in ‘Methods’ in the main text and in Hudson et al. (2014): a datasource is associated with one or more study records, each of...

The PREDICTS project—Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems (www.predicts.org.uk)—has collated from published studies a large, reasonably representative database of comparable samples of biodiversity from multiple sites that differ in the nature or intensity of human impacts relating to land use. We have used t...

The PREDICTS project—Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems (www.predicts.org.uk)—has collated from published studies a large, reasonably representative database of comparable samples of biodiversity from multiple sites that differ in the nature or intensity of human impacts relating to land use. We have used t...

Quantitative ecological data needs to inform management of the endangered, endemic Sri Lankan leopard. Estimating habitat-specific leopard density and prey availability provides important baselines and improved understanding of the island-wide population. We used remote cameras in a spatially explicit capture-recapture framework to estimate leopard...

Forest fragmentation is one of the leading global causes of biodiversity decline and species loss. The degree of threat to remaining forest patches in heavily fragmented regions is partially a function of their size and distance from larger, intact wilderness areas. To understand biodiversity loss in fragmented landscapes it is necessary to have ba...

The Sri Lankan leopard (Panthera pardus kotiya) is an endangered, endemic sub-species and the island’s only apex predator. As a probable keystone species the leopard’s ecological value in Sri Lanka is likely high. To best predict leopard presence in Sri Lanka, we used multi-scale maximum entropy modelling to investigate the influence of a suite of...

The leopard is the top predator in Sri Lanka and listed as an endangered species. Leopard can be conserved through conservation of prey and habitats. Studies related to abundance of prey species and current status based on various monitoring methods can contribute towards the conservation. This research focused on studying prey abundance using vari...

The relationship between selection at coarse and fine spatiotemporal spatial scales is still poorly understood. Some authors claim that, to accommodate different needs at different scales, individuals should have contrasting selection patterns at different scales of selection, while others claim that coarse scale selection patterns should reflect f...

Abstract Accurate detection of individual animals and estimation of ungulate population density might be a function of vegetation cover, animal size, observation radius or season. We assessed the effect of these factors on estimates of detection probability and density using five ungulate species in Western Serengeti National Park, Tanzania. Estima...

The Sri Lankan leopard (Panthera pardus kotiya) is an endangered sub-species and the apex predator in its system. To devise effective management and conservation strategies for this large, wide-ranging carnivore, it is necessary to better understand fundamental aspects of its ecology and behaviour including distribution, habitat-specific abundance...

As human populations continue to grow and expand into ever decreasing wilderness areas, interactions between humans and wildlife are also likely to increase. Co-existence between people and wildlife has been a part of human history and influenced human culture, diet and settlement patterns; however when these interactions increase in frequency and...

The Sri Lankan leopard (Panthera pardus kotiya) is an endangered genetic sub-species that has been without intra-guild competition for thousands of years. If typical leopard ecology is partly due to the influence of intra-guild competition, this unique evolutionary scenario in Sri Lanka suggests leopards might be expected to display different ecolo...

Some species, more than others, exert a profound influence on ecosystem function and often these are wide-ranging apex carnivores with the potential to influence across trophic levels. Their distribution across and utilisation of a landscape could be instrumental in shaping it, and therefore the pattern of persistence of such species and the factor...

Movement patterns offer a rich source of information on animal behavior and the ecological significance of landscape attributes. This is especially useful for species occupying remote landscapes where direct behavioral observations are limited. In this study we fit a mechanistic model of animal cognition and movement to GPS positional data of woodl...

The endangered Sri Lankan Leopard Panthera pardus kotiya occupies the island’s highly fragmented central hills where data on its feeding ecology and habitat use is largely absent. This study’s objective was to investigate diet and resource selection of leopards here with a focus on the extent of potential interactions with humans in this heavily po...

Background/Question/Methods Woodland caribou populations in the boreal forest are declining across North America as well as exhibiting dramatic range contraction. Multiple causal factors may be implicated, including climate change, declining food resources, enhanced predation risk due to apparent competition, and avoidance of areas of heavy human...

The Sri Lankan leopard Panthera pardus kotiya is an endangered sub-species and data on its status, distribution and abundance in the island's central hills is lacking. A main objective of this long term study (2003-2011) is to determine these fundamental aspects of leopard ecology in this highly fragmented wet zone region. Here we report results fr...

Resource selection is a fundamental ecological process impacting population dynamics and ecosystem structure. Understanding which factors drive selection is vital for effective species- and landscape-level management. We used resource selection probability functions (RSPFs) to study the influence of two forms of wolf (Canis lupus) predation risk, s...