Assessing carnivore spatial co-occurrence and temporal overlap in the face of human interference in a semi-arid forest

Apex predators drive top-down effects in ecosystems and the loss of such species can trigger mesopredator release. This ecological process has been well documented in human-modified small areas, but for management and conservation of ecological communities, it is important to know which human factors affect apex predator occurrence and which mediate mesopredators release at large scales. We hypothesized that mesopredators would avoid spatial and temporal overlap with the apex predator, the puma; but that human perturbations (i.e. cattle raising and trophy hunting) would dampen top-down effects and mediate habitat use. We installed 16 camera traps in each of 45, 10x10-km grid cells in the Caldén forest region of central Argentina resulting in 706 total stations covering 61,611km2. We used single-season occupancy and two-species co-occurrence models and calculated the species interaction factor (SIF) to explore the contributions of habitat, biotic, and anthropic variables in explaining co...