Life Sciences & Biotechnology
Title : | Climate change effects on the mesocarnivore community in the Indian Himalaya |
Area of research : | Life Sciences & Biotechnology |
Principal Investigator : | Dr. Manvi Sharma, Nature Conservation Foundation, Mysore |
Timeline Start Year : | 2022 |
Timeline End Year : | 2024 |
Contact info : | manvigsharma@gmail.com |
Details
Executive Summary : | Climate change is threatening the global populations of apex predators, leading to large-scale mesopredator release, increasing the activity, abundance, and distribution of smaller predators. Our understanding of mesocarnivore community interactions is limited, based on studies from the global north with simpler carnivore communities. This study aims to examine climate change effects on the interactions between the mesocarnivore community in the Indian Himalaya, a region experiencing rapid climate change. Previous work in Himachal Pradesh suggests that large-bodied carnivores, such as snow leopards and common leopards, co-occur in space with smaller carnivores, such as red foxes, leopard cats, stone martens, and yellow-throated martens. The study proposes to examine how the habitat use and activity pattern of mesocarnivores change during periods of low and high thermal stress in the landscape. The hypothesis is tested that large carnivores suppress smaller carnivores by restricting their use of favourable thermal refuges, a novel mechanism of mesocarnivore suppression by apex predators. The study takes a community-level approach to understand how climate change-related warming could alter the thermal landscape and lead to changes in inter-species interactions. The study will be conducted in Himachal Pradesh, where the mesocarnivore community co-occurs with larger predators, snow leopards, and common leopards. The methodological approach includes conducting camera trapping surveys at two levels of thermal stress, mapping the macro- and microclimate landscape at the study site, and using species occurrence information to model spatio-temporal patterns of habitat use between sampling periods for the mesocarnivore community. |
Organizations involved