DOI: 10.5061/dryad.gb794
title: Data from: Caching reduces kleptoparasitism in a solitary, large felid

description: Food caching is a common strategy used by a diversity of animals,
 including carnivores, to store and/or secure food. Despite its prevalence,
 the drivers of caching behaviour, and its impacts on individuals, remain
 poorly understood, particularly for short-term food cachers. Leopards
 Panthera pardus exhibit a unique form of short-term food caching,
 regularly hoisting, storing and consuming prey in trees. We explored the
 factors motivating such behaviour among leopards in the Sabi Sand Game
 Reserve, South Africa, associated with four not mutually exclusive
 hypotheses: food-perishability, consumption-time, resource-pulse and
 kleptoparasitism-avoidance. Using data from 2032 prey items killed by 104
 leopards from 2013 to 2015, we built generalized linear mixed models to
 examine how hoisting behaviour, feeding time and the likelihood of a kill
 being kleptoparasitized varied with leopard sex and age, prey size and
 vulnerability, vegetation, elevation, climate, and the immediate and
 long-term risk posed by dominant competitors. Leopards hoisted 51% of
 kills. They were more likely to hoist kills of an intermediate size,
 outside of a resource pulse and in response to the presence of some
 competitors. Hoisted kills were also fed on for longer than non-hoisted
 kills. At least 21% of kills were kleptoparasitized, mainly by spotted
 hyaenas Crocuta crocuta. Kills were more likely to be kleptoparasitized at
 lower temperatures and if prey were larger, not hoisted, and in areas
 where the risk of encountering hyaenas was greatest. Female leopards that
 suffered higher rates of kleptoparasitism exhibited lower annual
 reproductive success than females that lost fewer kills. Our results
 strongly support the kleptoparasitism-avoidance hypothesis and suggest
 hoisting is a key adaptation that enables leopards to coexist
 sympatrically with high densities of competitors. We further argue that
 leopards may select smaller-sized prey than predicted by optimal foraging
 theory, to balance trade-offs between kleptoparasitic losses and the
 energetic gains derived from killing larger prey. Although caching may
 provide the added benefits of delaying food perishability and enabling
 consumption over an extended period, the behaviour primarily appears to be
 a strategy for leopards, and possibly other short-term cachers, to reduce
 the risks of kleptoparasitism.
description: GLMM_hoisting behaviour
 (full)Standardized data used
 in generalized linear mixed models assessing the likelihood of a leopard
 hoisting a kill. Includes the full data set from
 2013-2015.GLMM_hoisting behaviour
 (2015)Standardized data used
 in generalized linear mixed models assessing the likelihood of a leopard
 hoisting a kill. Includes data only from 2015, testing the
 kleptoparasitism-avoidance hypothesis.GLMM_feeding
 timeStandardized data used
 in generalized linear mixed models assessing the determinants of leopard
 feeding time.GLMM_kleptoparasitism
 riskStandardized data used
 in generalized linear mixed models assessing the likelihood that a leopard
 kill was kleptoparasitised.LR_KleptoARSTransformed data used in the linear regression assessing the relationship between the annual reproductive success of female leopards and the proportion of kills lost to kleptoparasitism.