Top-dogs and under-dogs: Competition between dogs and sympatric carnivores

Of the 285 species of Carnivora 71 are threatened, while many of these species fulfill important ecological roles in their ecosystems as top or meso-predators. Population transition matrices make it possible to study how age-specific survival and fecundity affect population growth, extinction risks, and responses to management strategies. Here we review 38 matrix models from 35 studies on 27 Carnivora taxa, covering 11% of the threatened Carnivora species. We show that the elasticity patterns (i.e. distribution over fecundity, juvenile survival and adult survival) in Carnivora cover the same range in triangular elasticity plots as those of other mammal species, despite the specific place of Carnivora in the food chain. Furthermore, reproductive loop elasticity analysis shows that the studied species spread out evenly over a slow-fast continuum, but also quantifies the large variation in the duration of important life cycles and their contributions to population growth rate. These general elasticity patterns among species, and their correlation with simple life history characteristics like body mass, age of first reproduction and life span, enables the extrapolation of population dynamical properties to unstudied species. With several examples we discuss how this slow-fast continuum, and related patterns of variation in reproductive loop elasticity, can be used in the formulation of tentative management plans for threatened species that cannot wait for the results of thorough demographic studies. We argue, however, that such management programs should explicitly include a plan for learning about the key demographic rates and how these are affected by environmental drivers and threats.

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Carnivora population dynamics are as slow and as fast as those of other mammals: implications for their conservation.

Small carnivore abundance from track plot, camera-trap, and spot-lighting surveys were compared between a contiguous tract of tropical rainforest and 10 rainforest fragments in the southern Western Ghats, India. Although six species were recorded from the rainforests in this region, surveys targeted three nocturnal species. Small carnivore abundance was higher in contiguous rainforests, especially the endemic Brown Palm Civet Paradoxurus jerdoni, whose occurrence was positively infl uenced by food-tree densities and altitude, and was higher in medium-sized (51–100 ha) fragments adjoining shade-coffee plantations than the more isolated smaller and larger fragments. The omnivorous and widespread Small Indian Civet Viverricula indica and mongooses Herpestes spp. were more frequent in rainforest fragments than in the relatively undisturbed, large, contiguous tract of rainforest in Kalakad–Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve. Thus, small carnivores persist in fragmented landscapes with altered community structure, but long-term persistence may require protection of private fragments, fostering benign land-uses, and restoration of degraded areas.

Responses of small carnivores to rainforest fragmentation in the southern Western Ghats, India

Malabar Civet Viverra civettina, one of only two small carnivores in the world listed as Critically Endangered, is considered endemic to the Western Ghats, India. However, it has never been sighted with certainty in the wild and its ‘known’ ecology is based on speculation, not fact. We reviewed the history of its collection and published and unpublished literature on the species, and collated and interpreted results of recent surveys in order to review critically some persistent uncertainties about the species. All known skins have changed hands before reaching their current destinations, and the primary origin of each remains unknown. Malabar Civet is so close morphologically to the disjunct Large-spotted Civet V. megaspila of South-east Asia that the two are often considered conspecific. Four early skins have been identified as both V. megaspila and V. civettina at different times. Discrepancies in the early field descriptions attributed to Malabar Civet suggest that they refer to other, non-congeneric, species (no other Viverra is suspected to occur in southern India), yet most of these descriptions have been repeated as applying to Malabar Civet almost verbatim until the present, with no additional information from the wild. We present a novel possibility that the genus Viverra does not occur in the wild in southern India and Malabar Civet is not a taxon. If the latter is a valid taxon, the results of recent surveys suggest that it may be either extinct or near extinction across its small world range.

Mystery or myth: a review of history and conservation status of the Malabar Civet Viverra civettina Blyth, 1862

A checklist of mammals of Tamil Nadu State is presented in this paper. Accepted English names, scientific binomen, prevalent vernacular names in Tamil, IUCN conservation status, Indian Wildlife (Protection) Act schedules, the appendices in the CITES, endemism, the distribution of species in India, the Western Ghats & plains of Tamil Nadu, and the complete bibliography pertaining to the 132 species of mammals of Tamil Nadu are given.

A checklist of mammals of Tamil Nadu, India

The Malabar and brown palm civets, Viverra civettina and Paradoxurus jerdoni, are both endemic to the Western Ghats of south-west India. Little is known about them and in 1990 a survey was conducted in three parts of the Western Ghats to assess their status. This revealed that isolated populations of Malabar civet still survive in less disturbed areas of South Malabar but they are seriously threatened by habitat destruction and hunting because they are outside protected areas. The brown palm civet is not immediately threatened because there are about 25 protected areas within its distribution range. Recommendations have been made for conservation action to ensure the survival of these animals.

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N. V. K. Ashraf

Papers

Two endemic viverrids of the Western Ghats, India