Search research articles

ABOUT JoVE

Overview Leadership Blog JoVE Help Center

AUTHORS

Publishing Process Editorial Board Scope & Policies Peer Review FAQ Submit

LIBRARIANS

Testimonials Subscriptions Access Resources Library Advisory Board FAQ

RESEARCH

JoVE Journal Methods Collections JoVE Encyclopedia of Experiments Archive

EDUCATION

JoVE Core JoVE Business JoVE Science Education JoVE Lab Manual Faculty Resource Center Faculty Site

Terms & Conditions of Use

Related Concept Videos

Predator-Prey Interactions

Predator-Prey Interactions

Predators consume prey for energy. Predators that acquire prey and prey that avoid predation both increase their chances of survival and reproduction (i.e., fitness). Routine predator-prey interactions elicit mutual adaptations that improve predator offenses, such as claws, teeth, and speed, as well as prey defenses, including crypsis, aposematism, and mimicry. Thus, predator-prey interactions resemble an evolutionary arms race.

Conservation of Declining Populations

Conservation of Declining Populations

Conservation of declining population focuses on ways of detecting, diagnosing, and halting a population decline. The approach uses methods to prevent populations from going extinct.

Threats to Biodiversity

Threats to Biodiversity

There have been five major extinction events throughout geological history, resulting in the elimination of biodiversity, followed by a rebound of species that adapted to the new conditions. In the current geological epoch, the Holocene, there is a sixth extinction event in progress. This mass extinction has been attributed to human activities and is thus provisionally called the Anthropocene. In 2019 the human population reached 7.7 billion people and is projected to comprise 10 billion by...

Habitat Fragmentation

Habitat Fragmentation

Habitat fragmentation describes the division of a more extensive, continuous habitat into smaller, discontinuous areas. Human activities such as land conversion, as well as slower geological processes leading to changes in the physical environment, are the two leading causes of habitat fragmentation. The fragmentation process typically follows the same steps: perforation, dissection, fragmentation, shrinkage, and attrition.

Conservation of Small Populations

Conservation of Small Populations

Small population sizes put a species at extreme risk of extinction due to a lack of variation, and a consequent decrease in adaptability. This weakens the chances of survival under pressures such as climate change, competition from other species, or new diseases. Large populations are more likely to survive pressures such as these, as such populations are more likely to harbor individuals that have genetic variants that are adaptive under new stresses. Small populations are much less...

Keystone Species

Keystone Species

Measures of species biodiversity, such as richness (i.e., the number of species present) and evenness (i.e., their relative abundance), describe an ecological community’s structure. Many factors affect community structure, including abiotic factors (e.g., sunlight and nutrients), disturbances (e.g., fire or flood), species interactions (e.g., predation or competition), and chance events (e.g., foreign species invasion). Certain species—such as keystone species—also play a...

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by

Same author

Networks of Indirect Contact Promote Spread of an Environmentally Transmitted Pathogen in a Highly Social Species.

Ecology and evolution·2026

Same author

Warming temperatures increase close encounters between two top predator species via changes in spatial behaviour.

Movement ecology·2026

Same author

Vulnerability of marine megafauna to global at-sea anthropogenic threats.

Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology·2025

Same author

Comparative life-cycle analyses reveal interacting climatic and biotic drivers of population responses to climate change.

PNAS nexus·2025

Same author

Wild canids and felids differ in their reliance on reused travel routeways.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·2025

Same author

Dingo movement depends on sex, social status and litter size.

Royal Society open science·2025

Search research articles

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 11, 2025

Linking Predation Risk, Herbivore Physiological Stress and Microbial Decomposition of Plant Litter

Linking Predation Risk, Herbivore Physiological Stress and Microbial Decomposition of Plant Litter

Published on: March 12, 2013

Droughts reshape apex predator space use and intraguild overlap.

Leigh West^1,2, Kasim Rafiq^1,2, Sarah J Converse³

¹Center for Ecosystem Sentinels, Department of Biology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA.

The Journal of Animal Ecology

|October 5, 2024

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Climate change-induced droughts expand large carnivore home ranges, increasing overlap between species like lions and cheetahs. This impacts their interactions, potentially requiring larger protected areas for conservation.

Keywords:

Acinonyx jubatus Lycaon pictus Panthera leo Panthera pardus climate change intraguild competition large carnivore ecology movement ecology

More Related Videos

Modeling the Size Spectrum for Macroinvertebrates and Fishes in Stream Ecosystems

Modeling the Size Spectrum for Macroinvertebrates and Fishes in Stream Ecosystems

Published on: July 30, 2019

Collecting Marine Gnathiid Isopod Fish Parasites with Light Traps

Collecting Marine Gnathiid Isopod Fish Parasites with Light Traps

Published on: September 25, 2023

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Jun 11, 2025

Linking Predation Risk, Herbivore Physiological Stress and Microbial Decomposition of Plant Litter

Linking Predation Risk, Herbivore Physiological Stress and Microbial Decomposition of Plant Litter

Published on: March 12, 2013

Modeling the Size Spectrum for Macroinvertebrates and Fishes in Stream Ecosystems

Modeling the Size Spectrum for Macroinvertebrates and Fishes in Stream Ecosystems

Published on: July 30, 2019

Collecting Marine Gnathiid Isopod Fish Parasites with Light Traps

Collecting Marine Gnathiid Isopod Fish Parasites with Light Traps

Published on: September 25, 2023

Area of Science:

Ecology
Climate Change Biology
Conservation Science

Background:

Global climate change is increasing drought frequency and severity, impacting resource availability and animal ecology.
Understanding how drought affects animal behavior, particularly large carnivores, is crucial for predicting community-level responses.
Limited multi-species data hinders understanding of climate variability's impact on carnivore behavior and intraguild dynamics.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the impact of drought on large carnivore space use and intraguild dynamics.
To analyze how drought influences spatial overlap and fine-scale interactions among sympatric large carnivores.
To link environmental change, animal behavior, and intraguild relationships.

Main Methods:

Utilized 11 years of GPS data from lions, leopards, African wild dogs, and cheetahs in southern Africa.
Analyzed data spanning four severe drought events to assess changes in space use and spatial overlap.
Examined fine-scale intraguild interactions in relation to drought conditions.

Main Results:

Drought significantly expanded monthly home range sizes for all studied carnivore species (35%–66%).
Spatial overlap between lions and subordinate felids (cheetahs, leopards) increased by up to 119% during droughts.
Lion-cheetah encounter rates decreased under drought conditions, despite increased spatial overlap.

Conclusions:

Drought demonstrably alters large carnivore space use and spatiotemporal partitioning among competing species.
Fine-scale avoidance behaviors may aid coexistence during droughts, but long-term conservation needs larger areas.
Conservation strategies must account for increased space demands of large carnivores due to intensifying droughts.