Leopard dependence on domestic animals 693
FIG. 1 Jhalana Reserve Forest in north-west India, and the surrounding city of Jaipur, with the locations of the leopard Panthera pardus fusca scats collected.
often feed opportunistically on easily accessible domestic prey (Athreya et al., 2013, 2014). We thus hypothesized that the leopards’ diet comprises principally of domestic animals. Our objectives were to identify the leopards’ key prey species and examine their importance for human– leopard coexistence and acceptance of the presence of leo- pards in the urban landscape (Kumbhojkar et al., 2019).
Study area
The 29 km2 Jhalana Reserve Forest lies on the south-east border of the city of Jaipur in north-west India (Fig. 1). It was designated on 21 November 1961 in accordance with the provisions of Rajasthan Forest Act 1953. The Reserve has a mean altitude of 516 m, with higher elevations in the north in the form of low, flat-topped hills, and is character- ized by tropical dry deciduous forest. During the 1980s the main valley was planted with the native species Acacia tortilis and Acacia senegal.
Methods
The population of leopards in theReserve has been estimated, using camera traps and recognition of individuals, to com- prise 25 individuals (authors, unpubl. data). In a 2017 survey of the Reserve we found that leopards used trails and tourist routes for defecation.Wemonitored the trails, collecting 138 scat samples in the dry season of November 2017–April 2018 (Kumbhojkar et al., 2019; Fig. 1). The identity of leopard scats was confirmed using their occurrence in scrapes characteristic of those made by large
felids (the leopard is the only large felid present in the Reserve). Trained volunteers wearing gloves used forceps to collect the scats. A small portion of each scat was left, so as to not disrupt the natural markings of the leopards (Schwarz & Fischer, 2006). The location of each scat was noted, with a GPS, at the time of collection. Scats were stored in numbered polythene, zip-lock bags. Preliminary observations such as the presence of bones, claws, skin and other biological remains were noted if appropriate. Highly degraded scats (n = 6; 4.3%) were excluded from
the analysis and only well-preserved scats (n = 132) were ana- lysed. They were washed under running water and sundried. The cuticular andmedullar patterns of any hair remainswere observed and photographed under a compoundmicroscope. Scat analysiswas based onMukherjee et al. (1994),Mukherjee &Mishra(2001), diet-related studies (Karanth & Sunquist, 1995; Biswas & Sankar, 2002; Sankar & Johnsingh, 2002; Andheria et al., 2007; Khorozyan et al., 2008;Odden & Wegge, 2009), and our own collections of prey remains. All hair, hooves, claws, teeth, nails and bones were separated for further analysis. Prey species were identified based on com- parison with reference slides of hair samples from domestic animals in the study area and from reference slides of hair samples from wild prey and from previous studies (Oli, 1993;Tiwari, 2008). To assess if the sample size was sufficient for accurate
diet analysis (Edgaonkar & Chellam, 1998;Kshettry etal., 2018) we applied the rarefaction method, implemented in EstimateS 9.1 (Colwell, 2005). This method estimates the expected cumulative number of species, with 95% confidence intervals (the Mao Tau estimator; Colwell, 2005).
Oryx, 2021, 55(5), 692–698 © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605319001145
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