Sympatric large carnivores in Senegal 669


FIG. 2 Non-metric dimensional scaling plot representing the pairwise dissimilarities between the four species of large carnivores (West African lion Panthera leo leo, leopard Panthera pardus, spotted hyaena Crocuta crocuta and wild dog Lycaon pictus) and other mammal species detected during the camera-trap survey in Niokolo-Koba National Park during the dry season (March–June) of 2021. The scientific names of the other species are listed in Supplementary Table 2. MDS, metric dimensional scale; NDVI, normalized difference vegetation index.


Niokolo River was removed from further analyses. The best covariate was the distance to the nearest road, contributing slightly more to the MDS1 axis than to the other axis (R2 = 0.29,MDS1 = 0.78,MDS2 = 0.62). Distance to the main rivers of the National Park (R2 = 0.22,MDS1 = 0.01, MDS2 = 0.99) and normalized difference vegetation index


(NDVI; R2 = 0.15,MDS1 =−0.09,MDS2 = 0.99) were both strongly associated with MDS2. Distance to the Gambian River was the weakest of the significant covariates (R2 = 0.06,MDS1 = 0.93,MDS2 = 0.36). Lion RAI was nega- tively related to the distance to the nearest road and the Gambian River, and to NDVI (Fig. 2). Leopard RAI was positively associated with NDVI, and wild dog RAI was positively associated with NDVI and distance to the nearest river. Finally, the representation of spotted hyaena in the nMDS was near zero, indicating almost no influence of covariates.


Occupancy Spotted hyaenas had the highest predicted de- tection probability (ρ = 0.31; range 0.25–0.38), followed by lions (ρ = 0.27; range 0.20–0.36), leopards (ρ = 0.19;


range 0.14–0.25) and African wild dogs (ρ = 0.12; range 0.05–0.27). Spotted hyaenas also had the highest probability of site use (ψ = 0.79; range 0.59–0.90), followed by leopards (ψ = 0.60; range 0.43–0.76), lions (ψ = 0.26; range 0.13–0.46) and African wild dogs (ψ = 0.21; range 0.03–0.70; Figs 3 & 4). The top-ranked model for the spot- ted hyaena (Table 2) included all four detection covariates and two covariates influencing site use, namely NDVI (negative association) and leopard RAI (positive associ- ation). The presence of spotted hyaenas influenced the de- tection of leopards, and only the distance to the nearest road influenced the probability of site use for leopards (Table 2). We included no detection covariates in the best models for lion and African wild dog. Distance to the Gambian River was the most important covariate affecting lion site use, amongst two other covariates (NDVI and leopard RAI). African wild dog site use was negatively associated with the RAIs of the two felids (Table 2). The results of the goodness-of-fit tests for the best models indicated no evidence of a lack of fit for spotted hyaena, leopard and wild dog (Supplementary Table 1). By contrast, the


Oryx, 2024, 58(5), 664–675 © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605323001746


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