Tayra (eira barbara) landscape use as a function of cover types, forest protection, and the presence of puma and free-ranging dogs

The study area included the Furnas do Bom Jesus State Park (20°11'14" to 20°16'34"S and 47°22'13" to 47°29'17" W; hereafter, Furnas), a 2069 ha protected area within in a cerrado landscape in the municipality of Pedregulho, São Paulo State, Brazil. We used unbaited camera traps (Bushnell® Trophy Cam 6.0 Mpxl and Scoutguard ® SG 550) to survey for tayra, puma, and free-ranging dogs at 60 sampling sites between January and August 2017. We placed the camera traps at each intersection of a 1 km2 grid extending inside (n=44) and outside of Furnas (n=16) (Figure 1) totaling 4,815 ha of sampled area. Three of the camera traps failed, so our final sample of surveyed sites was 57. We affixed cameras to tree trunks approximately 30–40 cm above ground and programmed for continuous operation (24 hours/day), capturing three photographs at each triggering event with a 10 second interval between events. We deployed camera traps for 60 to 132 days at each sampling point and checked camera operation every 15–20 days. Camera trapping is a continuous form of monitoring, so we subdivided the survey period for each camera into discrete intervals representing sampling occasions. We generated encounter histories for each species at each camera with detections and non-detections dividing data into nine 12-day sampling occasions.