Same place, different time: Leopards (Panthera pardus kotiya) employ temporal partitioning as a co-existence mechanism in a human-dominated, unprotected agricultural landscape in Sri Lanka.

Abstract

As humans and wildlife increasingly overlap on a rapidly changing planet, it is important to understand co-existence mechanisms in unprotected landscapes. This is especially so for large carnivores, with which humans share an uneasy history. In Sri Lanka's tea estate-dominated Central Highlands, a dense, widespread human population shares the landscape with the island's apex predator, the Sri Lankan leopard (Panthera pardus kotiya). This study used remote cameras to determine leopard density, generalized linear models to investigate leopard space-use in relation to key anthropogenic, ecological and environmental variables, and fitted kernel density curves to identify temporal activity patterns in this unprotected, human-dominated region. Adult leopard density (8.82/100 km2) was lower here than in key Sri Lankan National Parks, but not significantly, suggesting good leopard habitat suitability. Spatially, leopards did not avoid humans but incorporated anthropogenic factors into space-use decisions, with areas of intermediate human and dog presence disproportionately used. Male leopards were more likely to occur at intermediate distances from human settlements, perhaps balancing risk with efficiency while navigating this shared landscape. Female leopards biased space-use towards areas of high natural prey availability, aligning with their need to provision cubs. Temporally, leopards were significantly less diurnal and more active at dusk than their protected counterparts. This was likely due to temporal partitioning from diurnally active humans, an adaptation which allows for human-leopard co-existence. This is the first comprehensive study of leopards outside protected areas in Sri Lanka, and highlights the value of unprotected landscapes for long-term leopard conservation. To foster human-leopard co-existence it is necessary to maintain current human activity patterns which allow for temporal partitioning; ensure existing natural prey resources remain to prevent leopards switching to domestic prey species; and reduce/eliminate the use of wire snares which transcend the effect of temporal partitioning by de-coupling persecution risk from human presence.