DOI: 10.5061/dryad.4b8gtht90
title: Data from: Prey abundance and leopard diet in a plantation and rainforest landscape, Anamalai Hills, Western Ghats

description: Leopards use a wide range of habitats from natural forests to plantations
 in human-dominated landscapes. Within interface areas, understanding
 leopard ecology and diet can help in conservation management and conflict
 avoidance. In a fragmented rainforest and plantation landscape in southern
 India, we examined diet of large carnivores (with a focus on leopards)
 using scat analysis with DNA-based identification of predator species, and
 estimated relative abundance of prey species in different land uses
 through transect surveys. Large carnivores predominantly consumed wild
 prey species (98.1%) and domestic prey species contributed &lt;2% to
 overall prey biomass. For leopards, four wild prey species (Indian
 muntjac, Indian spotted chevrotain, sambar and Indian porcupine)
 contributed 95.1% of prey biomass, with the rest being minor wild prey
 species (no livestock in identified scats). Wild prey species occurred
 across the landscape but varied in relative abundance by land-use type,
 with forest fragments supporting higher abundance of many species relative
 to tea and coffee plantations. As large carnivores mainly depend on wild
 prey and rainforest fragments act as refuges for these mammals within the
 tea and coffee plantations, it is important to continue to retain or
 restore these forest fragments. This dataset contains abundance data on
 mammals (large carnivores and their prey species), using direct and
 indirect sign surveys along line and belt transects, respectively, as well
 as data on remains of prey species in large carnivore scats. This dataset
 is part of a study (published paper under Related works) on leopard
 ecology in a landscape containing commercial plantations of tea and
 coffee, and rainforest fragments and protected area. These data were
 collected between 2008 and 2010 in Valparai plateau and Anamalai Tiger
 Reserve in the Western Ghats, India. The dataset contains following files:
 1) Transect_details.csv 2) Transect_repeats.csv 3)
 Mammals_Direct_signs.csv 4) Mammals_Indirect_signs.csv 5)
 Large_carnivores_Indirect_signs.csv 6) Large_carnivore_Diet.csv More
 details regarding the above files can be found in
 ReadMe_Data_ColumnNames.txt. Update, version 2: Data were updated on 4 May
 2020. There was an error in the following file: Large_carnivore_Diet.csv.
 This file has been corrected and replaced in this update. All other files
 are correct and therefore not replaced.
description: <strong>Sign surveys:</strong> Direct surveys for
 mammal were conducted using line transects (2-km-long) and indirect sign
 surveys using belt transects (2 km long and 2 m wide) in four different
 habitat types: continuous forest as control site, coffee plantation,
 forest fragment, and tea plantation. <strong>Diet
 analysis:</strong> Scats were analysed for predator diet using
 indigestible remains of prey species, particularly hairs, bones, quills
 and feathers. Hairs were identified based on external morphology,
 cuticular and medullary patterns, and ratio of medulla to cortex in
 cross-section, with the help of a microscope and comparing with
 photographs of reference slides. Please see the paper
 (under Related works) for more details on methods.
description: ReadMe_LeopardData_Valparai.txt contains basic information about
 the dataset. ReadMe_Data_ColumnNames.txt gives details
 on all .csv files in the dataset and explains column names.