Abstract
S.A. Slovikosky. A Global Assessment of Scaling Relationships for Carnivore-Human Conflict and Leopard (Panthera pardus) Density, 104 pages, 5 tables, 7 figures, 2023. Landscape Ecology style guide used.
Synthesizing information across disparate studies remains challenging in part due to scaling issues, a concept requiring greater consideration with respect to observations of human-carnivore conflict and range-wide predictions of species status. I used published records to examine: 1) spatiotemporal scaling in livestock depredation metrics, and 2) global drivers of potential leopard (Panthera pardus) abundance. Generally, the apparent magnitude of livestock depredation increased with spatial and temporal extent, whereas predicted leopard density decreased with spatial extent. Temperature, primary productivity, and human impacts, measured over 1- to 20- km2 spatial extents, explained 38% of the observed variation in leopard density globally after accounting for study design effects. This work provides the first spatially explicit map of potential leopard abundance from southern Africa to far-eastern Russia, sheds light on scaling relationships for carnivore conflict metrics, and discusses additional work needed to provide the most reliable information to guide conservation actions for large carnivores worldwide.