Are wild prey sufficient for the top predators in the lowland protected areas of Nepal?

A balanced equilibrium between carnivores and their prey is crucial for maintaining ecosystem sustainability. In this study, we applied the predator-prey power law equation to assess the balance between the biomass densities of carnivores and their wild prey within Nepal’s lowland protected areas during 2013, 2018, and 2022. The estimated value of the power-law exponent k for predator-prey biomass was 0.71 (95% CI = 0.39-1.05), indicating an approximate three-fold increase in predator biomass density for every five-fold increase in prey biomass density. Consequently, this creates a systematically bottom-heavy predator-prey biomass pyramid. This finding, consistent with the k=3/4 trophic biomass scaling across ecosystems, suggests that predator biomass is proportionally sustained by prey biomass, indicating a balance between top predators and their wild prey in Nepal's lowland protected areas. We further demonstrated it is possible to retain the overall power law exponent while jointly m..., The dataset for this study was collected from five lowland protected areas (PAs) in Nepal—Parsa, Chitwan, Banke, Bardia, and Shuklaphanta National Parks—focusing on large carnivores like tigers and leopards. Data on tiger densities (per 100 sq km) and prey densities (per sq km) were gathered from national tiger surveys and line-transect estimates conducted in 2013, 2018, and 2022 by the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation (DNPWC), Nepal. Leopard densities (per 100 sq km) were obtained from various literature sources for the closest corresponding years.
The data was standardized per sq km for uniform comparisons across the parks. Biomass was calculated by multiplying species densities by their average weights, providing estimates for both prey and predator biomass per sq km across different years.
For analysis, a Bayesian approach using JAGS in R was employed to explore the predator-prey power law relationships for the combined biomass of predators and prey. The fundam..., , # Are wild prey sufficient for the top predators in the lowland protected areas of Nepal?

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.n5tb2rc56](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.n5tb2rc56)

## Description of the data and file structure

Data: The data is given in .csv format. R script, JAGS model to estimate the combined k value for tiger and leopard (combined predator-prey) and canonical correlation analysis (CCA) for examining the relationship between tiger and leopard biomass and their shared prey biomass (Figure 3 of the manuscript) are provided.

We have given the full JAG code for leopard-only and tiger-only model too (Appendices of the manuscript).

**Authors:**

**Saneer Lamichhane***

Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, School of Natural Resources and Environment

University of Florida, Gainesville, FL32611, USA.

**Abhinaya Pathak**

Department of Ecology, Behavior and Evolution, School of Biological Sciences

University of California, San Diego, CA 92093, USA.

**Aasish Gurun...