256 J. Mohd‐Azlan et al.
FIG. 3 Diel activity patterns of five felid species in Sarawak and the degree of overlap (Δ
^1 = ) between protected and unprotected study areas. Note the different scales of the
y-axes. The number of records indicates the total number of photographs used in the analysis, given as separate totals for protected/unprotected areas.
appears to be restricted to lowland forest, with most re- cords from below 100 m. Most detections of the leopard cat and bay cat were below 700 m, whereas the probability of occurrence of the marbled cat increased above 700 m (Fig. 6).
Species distributions
Based on MaxEnt modelling, flat-headed cats preferred peat swamp forest, marbled cats and clouded leopards preferred both lowland and montane forest, bay cats generally pre- ferred lowland forest, and leopard cats did not exhibit any preference for particular habitat types.
Discussion
Our study describes the distribution and occurrence pat- terns of felids as assessed over 17 years and across 31 local- ities in Sarawak, relative to ecological and anthropogenic variables. Bay and leopard cats had higher occurrence prob- abilities in unprotected than in protected sites in Sarawak.
Leopard cats were previously known to have a high toler- ance, and possible preference, for certain human-modified landscapes. Previous research suggested that unprotected areas such as plantations and agricultural areas, which often harbour rodents in high abundance, can sustain a high density of leopard cats, which exploit rodents as their main prey (Rajaratnam, 2000; Jennings et al., 2015; Chua et al., 2016). This is consistent with our findings: leopard cats were mostly recorded in oil palm plantation–forest matrix (Supplementary Table 2). The highest occurrence of leopard cats (Ψ= 0.797) was in the unprotected Gunung Penrissen, which is surrounded by settlements, plantations and fruit orchards (Jayaraj et al., 2006; Kaicheen & Mohd-Azlan, 2018; Supplementary Table 2). Within pro- tected areas, the probability of occurrence was highest (Ψ= 0.773) in the isolated Gunung Gading National Park, surrounded by oil palm plantations and rural settlements (Arif & Mohd-Azlan, 2014). Bay cats were recorded at six protected sites, with a low total number of independent cap- tures (Supplementary Table 2). The occurrence probability of the bay cat appeared to be higher at unprotected study
Oryx, 2023, 57(2), 252–261 © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605321001484
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