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

The tayra (Eira barbara) is a common and broadly distributed Neotropical carnivore, yet is not well-studied.  While this species is apparently associated with forested habitats, it also appears tolerant of some anthropogenic disturbance. We deployed 57 unbaited camera traps (n = 4,923 trap-days) in and around a protected area (Furnas do Bom Jesus State Park, São Paulo, Brazil) to survey for tayra and two potentially interactive species: puma (Puma concolor) and free-ranging dogs (Canis familiaris). We used encounter histories generated from photographs and occupancy models to quantify tayra landscape use in the human-dominated landscape composed of the protected area that was near a city and surrounded by agricultural lands dominated by small farms. We fit co-occurrence models to understand whether puma and free-ranging dogs affected landscape use by tayra. We detected tayra at 44% of sites and found that tayra landscape use increased with the proportion of forest cover within 500m of t...