Sumatran mesocarnivores : small-medium sized wild felids of the Kerinci Seblat landscape

The study of mesopredators, their guilds, and conservation has had little attention in the tropics of Southeast Asia. A particularly interesting group, from the point of view of their ecological community and because of their generally threatened status, is the Felidae. This thesis reports an intensive camera-trapping study of small-medium sized wild felids in the Kerinci Seblat landscape in west-central Sumatra. Samples were drawn from seven study areas across a diversity of habitats occupied by clouded leopard, golden cat, marbled cat, leopard cat, and their prey. The papers comprising this thesis report on the ecology, behaviour, population status and trends, core areas and habitat connectivity of this predator- prey community, and prioritizing conservation in a multi-species management approach. Specifically, this thesis has five main results: (i) revealed spatial and temporal interactions between clouded leopard, golden cat, and their respective prey through performing Bayesian two species occupancy modelling and temporal overlap analyses; (ii) estimated population densities of clouded leopard, in the context of human activities, by implementing Bayesian Spatially Explicit Capture Recapture (SECR) and identified and quantified illegal human activities detected by camera traps; (iii) estimated occupancy states as an indicator of clouded leopard and golden cat population dynamics from consecutive surveys in 2009-11 and 2014-16 and anthropogenic pressures from deforestation in the surrounding areas; and (iv) identified high priority areas within and outside protected area networks through estimating multi-species habitat use and least cost path and kernel density estimate analyses for defining core areas and corridor networks. Integrating these four research themes, this thesis contributes to absent information on the felid mesocarnivores of Sumatra, and offers analytical methodologies for assessing their ecology, behaviour, conservation, and management that can be applied throughout the tropics.