Luke T. B. Hunter

Wildlife Conservation Society | WCS · Center for Global Conservation

Deciding when to terminate care of offspring is a key consideration for parents. Prolonging care may increase fitness of current offspring, but it can also reduce opportunities for future reproduction. Despite its evolutionary importance, few studies have explored the optimal duration of parental care, particularly among large carnivores. We used a...

The Asiatic cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus venaticus), nowadays the rarest subspecies of cheetah, once roamed immense areas from the Arabian Peninsula through southwest Asia to India, but is now confined to a small population in Iran. Although it remains present across vast drylands of central-eastern Iran, the limits of its current and past ranges, as...

Significance Protected areas (PAs) are the cornerstone of conservation yet face funding inadequacies that undermine their effectiveness. Using the conservation needs of lions as a proxy for those of wildlife more generally, we compiled a dataset of funding in Africa’s PAs with lions and estimated a minimum target for conserving the species and mana...

Introduction, including summary details on changes made since the book's first edition; and examples of 2 new double-page spreads showing the new, updated range maps and coverage of new species described since the first edition.

Anthropogenic mortality of wildlife is typically inferred from measures of the absolute decline in population numbers. However, increasing evidence suggests that indirect demographic effects including changes to the age, sex, and social structure of populations, as well as the behavior of survivors, can profoundly impact population health and viabi...

Context Many studies have documented the magnitude and socioecological drivers of livestock depredation, yet few have assessed how observations of depredation might vary with spatiotemporal scale. Understanding scaling relationships may allow for more accurate aggregation of observations collected across diverse extents and resolutions to better in...

Of all the ways human beings have modified the planet over the last 10,000 years, habitat loss is the most important for other species. To address this most critical threat to biodiversity, governments, non-governmental actors, and the public need to know, in near real-time, where and when habitat loss is occurring. Here we present an integrated ha...

The size of the home range of a mammal is affected by numerous factors. However, in the normally solitary, but polygynous, Leopard (Panthera pardus), home range size and maintenance is complicated by their transitory social grouping behavior, which is dependent on life history stage and/or reproductive status. In addition, the necessity to avoid co...

Lions are one of the world’s most iconic species but are threatened with extinction. Developing effective range-wide conservation plans are crucial but hampered by the relative lack of knowledge on specific threats facing each population and the socio-political context for conservation. Here, we present a range-wide examination of the relative frag...

In guilds, such as the large predators, species compete over multiple resources that are both consumable and non-consumable. The niche complementary hypothesis states that competitors can overlap in resource use if there is low overlap for at least one shared resource. In Africa, cheetah, Acinonyx jubatus, compete with other large carnivores across...

IUCN Red List Assessment for Asiatic cheetah

Spatial patterns of and competition for resources by territorial carnivores are typically explained by two hypotheses: 1) the territorial defence hypothesis and 2) the searching efficiency hypothesis. According to the territorial defence hypothesis, when food resources are abundant, carnivore densities will be high and home ranges small. In additio...

Protected areas serve as population strongholds for many large carnivores, with multi‐use landscapes along their borders forming the front‐lines of wildlife conservation. Understanding large carnivore population dynamics within working landscapes is difficult where anthropogenic mortality is high and unregulated. This study focused on working ranch...

Unlabelled: There are only about 7,100 adolescent and adult cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus) remaining in the wild. With the majority occurring outside protected areas, their numbers are rapidly declining. Evidence-based conservation measures are essential for the survival of this species. Genetic data is routinely used to inform conservation strategie...

Territoriality (the defence of exclusive home ranges) is a strategy utilized within mammal populations to maximize individual fitness by monopolizing available resources. There is a trade-off, however, between acquiring the resources necessary for survival and reproduction and the cost of defending their exclusive use. Clarifying the sociospatial o...

My research work is on the evolutionary biology of African lions, with focus on behavioral ecology mechanisms for coexistance. Current projects include longterm ecological studies on Serengeti lions, Conflict mitigation through conservation translocation to foster coexistence at the interface and trophy harvest monitoring and evaluation of hunted p...

There are only about 7,100 adolescent and adult cheetahs remaining in the wild. With the majority occurring outside protected areas, their numbers are rapidly declining. Evidence-based conservation measures are essential for the survival of this species. Genetic data is routinely used to inform conservation strategies, e.g., by establishing conserv...

As the top predator in African ecosystems, lions have lost more than 90% of their historical range, and few countries possess strong evidence for stable populations. Translocations (broadly defined here as the capture and movement of lions for various management purposes) have become an increasingly popular action for this species, but the wide arr...

We live in a world characterised by biodiversity loss and global environmental change. The extinction of large carnivores can have ramifying effects on ecosystems like an uncontrolled increase in wild herbivores, which in turn can have knock‐on impacts on vegetation regeneration and communities. Cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus) serve important ecosystem...

Species occur in sympatric assemblages, bound together by ecological relationships and interspecific interactions. Borneo and Sumatra host some of the richest assemblages of biota worldwide. The region, however, faces the highest global deforestation rates, which seriously threaten its unique biodiversity. We used a large camera trap dataset that r...

The Quiçama National Park and adjacent Quiçama Game Reserve are one of the most important protected areas of Angola. However, the Angolan civil war (1975-2002) combined with very low management presence even during peaceful periods resulted in extensive overexploitation of Quiçama’s wildlife, as well have precluded undertaking research there. Using...

Carbon emissions from savanna burning contribute to global climate change. Improved fire management in Africa could dramatically reduce carbon emissions and build ecosystem resilience, reduce threats to biodiversity and provide much needed financial support to local economies. Potential carbon revenues could substantially reduce protected area fund...

There are significant gaps in understanding the distribution of the African forest endemic, the African golden cat, Caracal aurata. Although Angola is included as a range country for the species, we know of no material record. Here, we document the first record with physical evidence of the species, from a bushmeat vendor in Uige Province, northern...

Variation in home range size exists among and within wildlife populations. Home range size variation may be driven by both intrinsic and extrinsic factors, including sex, food and reproductive resources, density and competition. In this study, we investigated the sex‐specific impacts of prey and reproductive resources, conspecific density and compe...

Home range size is a fundamental measure of animal space use, providing insight into habitat quality, animal density, and social organization. Human impacts are increasingly affecting wildlife, especially among wide-ranging species that encounter anthropogenic disturbance. Leopards (Panthera pardus) provide a useful model for studying this relation...

We use comparable 2005 and 2018 population data to assess threats driving the decline of lion Panthera leo populations, and review information on threats structured by problem tree and root cause analysis. We define 11 threats and rank their severity and prevalence. Two threats emerged as affecting both the number of lion populations and numbers wi...

Variability in habitat selection can lead to differences in fitness; however limited research exists on how habitat selection of mid-ranking predators can influence population-level processes in multi-predator systems. For mid-ranking, or mesopredators, differences in habitat use might have strong demographic effects because mesopredators need to s...

Despite having protected status, poaching for the illegal trade and traditional use remains a primary threat to leopards (Panthera pardus) across southern Africa. Addressing this threat is challenging, not only because it is difficult to uncover and monitor illicit behavior, but because law enforcement and alternative intervention strategies need t...

Persian leopards Panthera pardus saxicolor have been extirpated from over 84% of their historic range, and are now limited to rugged landscapes of west Asia and the Caucasus. Understanding and maintaining genetic diversity and population connectivity is important for preventing inbreeding and genetic drift, both of which can threaten population via...

Lions ( Panthera leo ) in Africa have lost nearly half their population in just the last two decades, and effective management of the protected areas (PAs) where lions live will cost an estimated USD >$1 B/year in new funding. We explore the potential for launching a fire management and habitat restoration carbon-financing program to help fill this...

Background Tackling behavioural questions often requires identifying points in space and time where animals make decisions and linking these to environmental variables. State-space modeling is useful for analysing movement trajectories, particularly with hidden Markov models (HMM). Yet importantly, the ontogeny of underlying (unobservable) behaviou...

Quantifying the distribution and size of home ranges is critical for understanding animal spatial dynamics. This is particularly important for large carnivores that reside in fragmented landscapes. Most studies that estimate home range consider only a bivariate frequency distribution represented by a two-dimensional planimetric surface. The underly...

Individual specialization, when individuals exploit only a subset of resources utilized by the population, is a widespread phenomenon. It provides the basis for evolutionary diversification and can impact population and community dynamics. Both phenotypic traits and environmental conditions are predicted to influence individual specialization; howe...

The population densities of leopards vary widely across their global range, influenced by prey availability, intraguild competition and human persecution. In Asia, particularly the Middle East and the Caucasus, they generally occur at the lower extreme of densities recorded for the species. Reliable estimates of population density are important for...

Research on drivers of demographic rates has mostly focused on top predators and their prey, and comparatively less research has considered the drivers of mesopredator demography. Of those limited studies, most focused on top‐down effects of apex predators on mesopredator population dynamics, whereas studies investigating alternative mechanisms are...

Abstract Globally, human activities have led to the impoverishment of species assemblages and the disruption of ecosystem function. Determining whether this poses a threat to future ecosystem stability necessitates a thorough understanding of mechanisms underpinning community assembly and niche selection. Here, we tested for niche segregation withi...

We investigated the simultaneous and sympatric movements of a coalition of two Asiatic Cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus venaticus) and a Persian Leopard (Panthera pardus saxicolor), two rare and highly mobile large felids in Bafq Protected Area, Iran. The animals were tracked with GPS collars for 4.5 to 9 months at a temporal resolution of eight hours. T...

Camera traps are a key tool in ecological studies, and are increasingly being used to understand entire communities. However, robust inferences continue to be hampered by low detection of rare and elusive species. Attractants can be used to increase detection rates, but may also alter behaviour, and little research has evaluated short-term, localiz...

Human impact is near pervasive across the planet and studies of wildlife populations free of anthropogenic mortality are increasingly scarce. This is particularly true for large carnivores that often compete with and, in turn, are killed by humans. Accordingly, the densities at which carnivore populations occur naturally, and their role in shaping...

Context The Sunda clouded leopard is vulnerable to forest loss and fragmentation. Conservation of this species requires spatially explicit evaluations of the effects of landscape patterns on genetic diversity, population size and landscape connectivity. Objectives We sought to develop predictions of Sunda clouded leopard population density, geneti...

Population monitoring of large carnivores, particularly in remote montane landscapes, represents a considerable conservation challenge. Occupancy modeling using repeated detection/non-detection surveys offers a practical and robust tool for assessments of this type. Sign surveys or photographic detections have been the two primary survey methods to...

Clouded leopards are among Asia's most widely distributed felids, but also among its least known and most vulnerable. Clouded leopards occur in some of the most rapidly disappearing forests in the world, yet a comprehensive assessment of their status and habitat use is lacking, which in turn limits identification of their priority conservation need...

Clouded leopards are among Asia's most widely distributed felids, but also among its least known and most vulnerable. Clouded leopards occur in some of the most rapidly disappearing forests in the world, yet a comprehensive assessment of their status and habitat use is lacking, which in turn limits identification of their priority conservation need...

A list of all non-carnivore species mentioned in the text of 'Field Guide to the Carnivores of the World" Second Edition, 2018

Niche differentiation, the partitioning of resources along one or more axes of a species’ niche hyper-volume, is widely recognised as an important mechanism for sympatric species to reduce interspecific competition and predation risk, and thus facilitate co-existence. Resource partitioning may be facilitated by behavioural differentiation along thr...

Bar chart showing the optimal scaling of habitat variables in Bornean felids. (PDF)

Histogram of the frequency of coefficient of temporal overlap (Δ1 and Δ4) values between Bornean felids and all other species and species groups (n = 58). a. Sunda clouded leopard males; b. Sunda clouded leopard females; c. bay cat; d. marbled cat; e. leopard cat. The 5th and 95th percentiles of the Δ1 and Δ4 distribution for each felid are shown i...

Details of the eight forest and two oil palm plantation study areas in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. (PDF)

Covariates used in the multi-scale habitat modelling of Bornean felid's occurrence in Sabah, including variable names, metrics calculated, and data sources. (PDF)

Table of variables used in the felid/candidate prey co-occurrence all-subsets modelling and the felid/candidate prey temporal activity overlap analysis, showing variable description, number of independent photographic records for each species/group of species. (PDF)

Scaling plots of AICc values and coefficient values for relationships between Bornean felid species’ occurrence and a range of predictor habitat variables cover type across 7 spatial scales. Spatial scales with the lowest AICc were deemed to be optimal, and used for further analysis. (PDF)

Details of camera trap survey protocols for surveys of eight forest areas and two palm oil plantations in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. (PDF)

Results of univariate logistic regressions to assess the relative importance of habitat variables in predicting Bornean felid occurrence, showing optimal scale of each habitat variable. Variables showing p values <0.2 were used in the multivariate analyses. (PDF)

Table of overlaps of temporal activity patterns between Bornean wild cat species pairs and between Bornean wild cats and their potential prey species, as estimated by kernel density estimates. The coefficients of overlap (Δ1 and Δ4) are accompanied by the upper and lower values of the 95% confidence limits. (PDF)

Describing predation patterns and especially estimating kill and consumption rates is essential for understanding the functional responses of predators. An understanding of the carrying capacity of the landscape, based on prey availability, also helps to formulate recovery plans for persecuted species. We studied the feeding behavior of the Persian...