Ecology of tiger, leopard and dhole in Western Ghats, India: Population, prey-predator relationships, competition and coexistence pattern

This work is an outcome of a detailed long-term study on prey selection, food habits and population status of tiger, leopard and dhole in Mudumalai Tiger Reserve, Tamil Nadu. The Mudumalai landscape is an exception where all the three predators coexist in high density by selecting different sized prey species suggesting that there is a close relationship between the exploitation of food resources and social organization within an animal species. The landscape has good potential for long term survival of large carnivores due to its wide extent of contiguous forest which support diverse body sized prey species in India. Large carnivores are conservation dependent species requiring large contiguous forests with less interspersion of undisturbed breeding areas. This makes Mudumalai an important area for the protection and conservation of these carnivores and their prey species.