First insights into Sumatran tiger–prey temporal interactions

Assessing tiger–prey interactions in Sumatran rainforests

M. Linkie AND M. S. Ridout

Journal of Zoology

Volume 284, Issue 3, pages 224–229, July 2011

Very little is known about Sumatran tiger–prey temporal interactions. Here the researchers are trying to unravel the mystery surrounding   Sumatran tiger ( Panthera tigris Sumatra)

The researchers quantify temporal overlap between the Sumatran tiger and five of its presumed prey species. This was from four study areas comprising disturbed lowland to primary submontane forest data from 126 camera traps.  Over 8984 camera days were used to estimate species activity patterns and, the overlap through the coefficient Δ (ranging from 0 to 1, i.e. no overlap to complete overlap). 

To determine confidence intervals associated with respective overlap a newly developed statistical technique was used.

Strong temporal overlap was found between tiger and muntjac Muntiacus muntjac (Δ=0.80, 95%CI=0.71–0.84) and tiger and sambarCervus unicolor (Δ=0.81, 0.55–0.85).

The authors signs off like this “ According to the foraging theory, Sumatran tigers should focus on expending lower levels of energy searching for and then capturing larger bodied prey that present the least risk. Hence, surprisingly, there was little overlap between the crepuscular tiger and the largest-bodied prey species available, the nocturnal tapir Tapirus indicus (0.52, 0.44–0.60), suggesting that it is not a principal prey species. This study provides the first insights into Sumatran tiger–prey temporal interactions. The ability to estimate overlap statistics with measures of precision has obvious and wide benefits for other predator–prey and interspecific competition studies.”