Media release

From: The Royal Society

Intraguild competition mediates human avoidance in an endangered African large carnivore

Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

African wild dogs – an endangered large carnivore species – experience intense competition from dominant lions. By combining camera trap and GPS data from both species, we showed that despite the risk posed by humans, wild dogs use human-dominated areas as a refuge from lion competition. Our study provides novel insight into how competition between large carnivores can mediate the responses of top predators to human disturbance, which has far-reaching implications for species persistence and human-wildlife coexistence as the human footprint expands globally.