Study of the sympatric Mesocarnivores of Ranthambhore National Park
Student name: Mr Arsh Marwaha
Guide: Dr Sudipta Chatterjee
Year of completion: 2016
Host Organisation: Ranthambhore National Park
Supervisor (Host Organisation): Dr Randeep Singh
Abstract: Estimation of Occupancy was done for four sympatric mesocarnivores found in Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve (RTR) namely: Caracal, Ratel, Jungle Cat and Jackal over the period from February-May 2016 in which the latter three yielded 46, 39 and 29 captures respectively while the Caracal wasn’t captured throughout the entire study period of 504 trap nights in the core area yielding trap rates of 0.0912, 0.077 and 0.055. Based on the total area sampled the Naïve occupancies for Ratel, Jungle Cat and Jackal were 0.5882.0.4118 and 0.2353 respectively while the estimated occupancies psi (Ψ) were 0.92 0.2014 (SE), 0.57 01436(SE) and 0.34 0.1324 (SE) wherein the detection probability was kept constant .Habitat Use analysis show that the three mesocarnivores preferred different conditions w.r.t parameters like elevation, proximity to water or settlements, aspect and slope. This study tried to shed light on much ignored class of carnivores, the mesocarnivores who are as ecologically important as the mega carnivores.
Key words: Camera Trapping, Occupancy, Mesocarnivores, Habitat Use, Ranthambhore
