Sex-specific dietary specialization in a terrestrial apex predator, the leopard, revealed by stable isotope analysis
Voigt, Christian C. ...
Apex predators in terrestrial ecosystems, such as leopards in the African savanna,feed on a wide variety of prey species, yet it is unknown whether individuals spe-cialize on certain prey, and ...whether specialization changes with body traits. Here,we asked whether individual specialization of adult leopards (Panthera pardus ) var-ies with sex, body mass, body length and age classes. We used the variation ofstable carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios in 643 segments of whiskers as a tempo-ral record of past diets and established isotopic dietary niches for 36 adult leopards(18 males, 18 females). Based on a variance analysis for stable carbon isotoperatios, we found that between-individual variation was larger than within-individualvariation, indicating a high degree of overall specialization within the studied leop-ards. Female adult leopards exhibited larger isotopic dietary niche widths than maleadult leopards. Isotopic niche width did not vary with body mass, body length orage. Our data suggest a difference in the level of specialization between the sexes,which might be explained by more opportunistic feeding of small-sized femaleleopards, most likely connected with a higher use of small prey species of differentisotopic composition. Inter-sexual resource partitioning likely facilitates territorysharing between the sexes.
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