462 R. L. Gasparini‐Morato et al.


FIG. 1 The estimated home range (with 95% CI bands) of jaguars Panthera onca 1 and 2 in the southern Pantanal, Brazil. Note the high overlap in their home ranges.


Pre-release, the two jaguarswere tested for all relevant in-


fectious and parasitic diseases. At c. 16 months old, having been confirmed healthy, they were moved on 27 July 2015 to a 1 ha enclosure with native vegetation (Plate 1) in the Caiman Ecological Refuge, a 53,000 ha private ranch in Miranda, Mato Grosso do Sul (Fig. 1). The ranch is a mixed enterprise, with cattle ranching and ecotourism. It follows jaguar-friendly best practices (Rampim et al., 2020), and hunting is not allowed on the property. As a result, po- tential prey is abundant and the estimated density of jaguars is c. 7 per 100 km2 (Soisalo&Cavalcanti, 2006). In the first 2 months in the enclosure the jaguars were fed meat and dead animals (roadkill), to facilitate acclimation. After this, live wild prey was captured and presented, one animal at a time. Prey was released into the enclosure through one of six guillotine gates. These gates were covered with wooden plates to prevent the jaguars associating the arrival of food with people. We observed that hunting was better after 7 days without food. After 11 months the two jaguars were able to chase, surprise and kill all the animals offered. On a few occasions we offered two prey, of the same species, simultaneously, to evaluate hunting behaviour. In total, the jaguars captured and consumed 46 prey, including white- lipped peccaries Tayassu pecari, capybaras Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris, caimans Caiman yacare and feral pigs Sus scrofa scrofa (Table 1). After fitting collars equipped with GPS/VHF, recording one location per hour, and acceler- ometers, the jaguars were monitored for 30 days inside the enclosure, to provide baseline data on activity patterns and social behaviour. The two jaguars were released at c. 27 months old, on 9 June 2016. To evaluate movement behaviour and estimate


home range and spatial overlap, we used 16 months of tel- emetry data (June 2016–September 2017).We also performed visual appraisals using images captured by a c. 200 km2 grid of 60 camera traps. We observed that jaguar no. 2 suffered initial loss of weight but recovered 20 days after release. The enclosure door remained open for 3 months and both ja- guars returned several times. We fitted a continuous-time stochastic movement model (ctmm; Calabrese et al., 2016) in R 3.5.1 (R Core Team, 2018) to evaluate movement behav- iour and estimate home range. This method accounts for the inherent serial autocorrelation of our data and could handle irregularities in the sample schedule (Fleming et al., 2015). Range residence behaviour was checked by visual inspection of a semi-variogram (function variogram in R). Movement models were fit with maximum likelihood (function ctmm. fit) and ranked based on the Aikake information criteria (function ctmm.select). We estimated home range condi- tional on the fitted model for both individuals using the akde function (autocorrelated kernel density estimator). We estimated spatial overlap using the overlap function. Daily activity patterns were evaluated using Activity Pat- tern Software (Lotek, Newmarket, Canada) after recovering the accelerometer data from the GPS collars. We adapted the method described by Cavalcanti & Gese


(2010) to identify prey consumed. When .4 consecutive locations were found,100mfrom each other thiswas clas- sified as a kill site, where we then searched for prey remains to identify the species. Social behaviour, interactions and reproduction were investigated by observation and camera- trap images. Range residence was confirmed after visual inspection of a semi-variogram, 2 months post release (Morato et al., 2016). Home range estimates were 97.6 km2


Oryx, 2021, 55(3), 461–465 © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605320000460


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