Movement ecology of the neotropical apex predator through different habitats and their interplay with preys

• Grant number: 18/13037-3
• Support type: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Effective date (Start): December 01, 2018
• Effective date (End): July 31, 2021
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Ecology - Applied Ecology
• Principal Investigator: Milton Cezar Ribeiro
• Grantee: Vanesa Fabiola Bejarano Alegre
• Home Institution: Instituto de Biociências (IB). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Rio Claro. Rio Claro , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Habitat selection is a vital process for large carnivores, because it is linked with compensation of defending a territory to obtain the resources necessary to fulfill all their physiological requirements. However, habitat loss and fragmentation are threatening their survival. This may occur because large carnivores are especially sensitive to landscape changes due to their large home range requirements, low abundance and reduced birth rates. Likewise, the Jaguar (Panthera onca) - one of the largest carnivores in the Neotropics - is also facing population declines associated with factors like declines of their preys' density in natural areas, fragmentation, poaching and anthropogenic-related conflicts by human expansion. Furthermore, the Jaguar exhibit variation on body size throughout its geographic distribution, suggesting that availability of resources and/or requirements may also vary across different biomes. This may be in part because, not only seasonality may influence Jaguars' fitness, but also density of resources and the degree of human activity presence across each habitat type. Thus, to improve our understanding of Jaguars' environmental requirements and challenges they might face on different biomes, we propose a Ph.D. project with three principal aims: 1) understand how landscape structure affects the sex-related habitat selection of Jaguar under a multi-scale approach. This chapter will provide insights about the influence of landscape scale of analysis on the Jaguar resource selection; 2) understand how landscape structure affects the movement behavior patterns and core revisitation sites of jaguars at different seasons. This chapter will generate important data related to how and when the landscape structure affects the movement behavior and revisitation patterns ofthe the Jaguar; 3) Jaguar-Peccary interactions are affected by the landscape structure in the Pantanal. We expect to obtain decisive results for understanding how landscape structure aspects that play a key role in the vital requirements of the Jaguar act through the different biomes and use that information to develop more efficient Jaguar management tools for conservation. (AU)