"Competition among carnivores in multi-species guilds is complex and difficult to disentangle"......."Pumas are both subordinate to some apex carnivores with which they are sympatric, but dominant over others".............."All available evidence to date suggests that gray wolves are dominant over pumas, likely due to their social structure and the fact that they often have the numerical advantage over pumas".............."Pumas exhibit habitat and dietary shifts in the presence of wolves and experience increased starvation as wolves re-establish in systems in which they were absent for some time"............"Wolves also harass pumas, the energy expense of which is approximately five times greater than the energy expenditure of normal hunting"..........."Wolves kleptoparatize and displace pumas from their kills".............. "Wolves also directly kill all age classes of pumas even while pumas do occasionally kill wolves"............"The influence of grizzly and black bears on pumas is less studied, but appears to be less severe than that of wolves due to the seasonal dormancy of bears that provide pumas a temporal reprieve from competition with these species"............"The most significant competition between bears and pumas documented in the literature is that bears displace pumas from their kills, costing pumas energetic calories in food lost and the additional efforts of hunting to procure more prey".............."If bears displace pumas from their kills often enough, pumas may increase their kill rates and influence other trophic levels".............."Bears also occasionally kill puma kittens but rarely kill adult pumas"............"Pumas also occasionally kill black bears".........."Whereas some authors were certain they found evidence that jaguars were dominant over pumas, other researchers, from areas where jaguars are smaller and sometimes numerically fewer than pumas, suggested the two species may be at least equal in competitive interactions, or even that pumas may be dominant over jaguars"............"We did discover five references that report incidents of jaguars killing pumas whereas we did not find a single documentation of the reverse"................"Most research suggests that pumas were dominant over coyotes, maned wolves, and felid mesocarnivores"................."This is not unexpected, given that pumas outweigh these species by a large margin"............"Packs of coyotes, however, do occasionally push pumas from their kills as well as harassing and killing puma kittens"

Read  full article by clicking on this link: https://peerj.com/articles/4293/

Are pumas subordinate carnivores, and does it matter?

L. Mark Elbroch​1, Anna Kusler1,2

Published January 24, 2018

Abstract

Background

Interspecific competition affects species
 fitness, community assemblages and
 structure, and the geographic
distributions of species. Established
dominance hierarchies among species
mitigate the need for fighting and
contribute to the realized niche for
subordinate species. This is especiall
 important for apex predators, many
of which simultaneous contend with
the costs of competition with more
dominant species and the costs
associated with human hunting and
lethal management.

Methods

Pumas are a widespread solitary felid
 heavily regulated through hunting to
reduce conflicts with livestock and
people. Across their range, pumas
 overlap with six apex predators
(gray wolf, grizzly bear, American
black bear, jaguar, coyote, maned wolf),
 two of which (gray wolf, grizzly bear)
are currently expanding in North
America following recovery efforts.
 We conducted a literature search
 to assess whether pumas were
subordinate or dominant with
 sympatric apex predators, as
 well as with three felid
mesocarnivores with similar
ecology (ocelot, bobcat, Canada
lynx). We also conducted an
analysis of the spatial distributions
 of pumas and their dominant
sympatric competitors to estimate
 in what part of their range, pumas
are dominant versus subordinate.

Results

We used 64 sources to assess
 dominance among pumas and
other apex predators, and 13
sources to assess their relationships
 with felid mesocarnivores. Evidence
suggested that wolves, grizzly bears,
 black bears, and jaguars are
dominant over pumas, but that
 pumas are dominant over coyotes
 and maned wolves. Evidence
suggested that pumas are also
dominant over all three felid
mesocarnivores with which they
 share range. More broadly, pumas
 are subordinate to at least one
 other apex carnivore in 10,799,252
(47.5%) of their 22,735,268 km2
 range across North and South
America.

Discussion

Subordinate pumas change their
 habitat use, suffer displacement
at food sources, likely experience
 increased energetic demands
 from harassment, exhibit increased
 starvation, and are sometimes
directly killed in competitive
 interactions with dominant
competitors. Nevertheless,
we lack research clearly linking
 the costs of competition to puma
 fitness. Further, we lack research
that assesses the influence of
human effects simultaneous with
 the negative effects of competition
 with other sympatric carnivores.
Until the time that we understand
 whether competitive effects are
 additive with human management,
 or even potentially synergistic,
we encourage caution among
managers responsible for
determining harvest limits for pumas
and other subordinate, apex
 carnivores in areas where they are
sympatric with dominant species.
This may be especially important
 information for managers working
in regions where wolves and brown
bears are recolonizing and recovering,
 and historic competition scenarios
 among multiple apex predators
are being realized.

      .

Bold arrows denote dominance, and point from the dominant species to the subordinate. Thin arrows denote some evidence to the contrary. (A) gray wolf (Canis lupus), (B) grizzly bear (Ursus arctos), (C) American black bear (Ursus americanus), (D) jaguar (Panthera unca), (E) puma (Puma concolor), (F) maned wolf (Chrysocyon brachyurus), (G) coyote (Canis latrans). Drawings by Mark Elbroch

Wolf Pack fighting a Puma

  

The extant range of pumas in North and South America. The light green denotes the portion of puma range where they are the only or dominant apex predator, and the orange denotes the portion of puma range where they are subordinate to at minimum one other apex predator. Source: ESRI, DigitalGlobe, GeoEye, Earthstar Geographics, CNES/Airbus DS, USDA, USGS, AE, Getmapping, Aerogrid, IGN, IGP, swisstopo, CIS User Community

Grizzly Bear fighting Puma

Puma fighting Coyote

Cite this as

Elbroch LM, Kusler A. 2018. Are pumas subordinate carnivores, and does it matter?PeerJ 6:e4293 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4293