Do large carnivores fare better in savannas when they get drier?

Research Highlight: Journal of Animal Ecology, 00, 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.70182. Beyond rising temperatures, several parts of Africa are affected by aridification (more frequent and worsening droughts, lengthening dry seasons). Such drier conditions are likely to affect in several ways not only the many large herbivore species but also the rich carnivore guild that characterise African savannas, with consequences on the behavioural ecology of predator-prey interactions. Using data sets of exceptional quality on the feeding behaviour and the reproduction of leopards and lions covering 4 years of contrasting environmental conditions in a semi-arid African savanna, Balme et al. analysed the effect of drought conditions on the carnivores' diet composition, kill rates, prey biomass acquisition but also cub production and survival. They showed that droughts led to a higher prey biomass consumption for the two carnivore species although the underlying mechanisms differed (higher kill rate for leopards and larger consumed prey for lionesses). Additionally, they revealed that the probability of cub survival was driven by factors other than drought-driven food acquisition (such as intraguild predation by hyaenas for leopards and sarcoptic mange for lions). Balme et al. (2025) convincingly showed that droughts influence not only predator-prey interactions through several pathways, but also carnivore intraguild interactions. Altogether, their findings illustrate the difficulty to predict the impact of drier conditions on carnivore populations if we do not better unravel the mechanisms through which climate change affects both predator-prey and predator-predator interactions. Overall, this inspiring study invites us to conceptualise a larger framework to study interspecific interactions in African mammals in a context of a drier (and hotter) climate.