Habitat selection of jaguars in a seasonally flooded landscape

Ecologists increasingly recognize the importance of habitat selection as a multi-level, hierarchical process, but individual-level variation in selection patterns have yet to be fully evaluated within populations of large carnivores. We assessed jaguar (Panthera onca) selection of forest across seasonally variable forest availability in the Pantanal region of South America. Using resource selection functions (RSF), we evaluated the importance of forest cover for jaguars in a heterogeneous, dynamic landscape, and how seasonal variability in habitat availability influences habitat selection and predation patterns. A multi-level hierarchical analytical framework revealed that jaguars increasingly selected forest cover as availability of other habitats declined due to seasonal flooding. At the population range level, jaguars selected water, forest, and bushy grassland comparably during the dry season, and bushy grassland, forest, and flat grassland during the wet season. At the home range level, bushy grassland and forest were selected during both seasons. Jaguars killed prey animals with comparable frequency across forest, water, and bushy grasslands during the dry season, with more preference detected for forest and avoidance of grasslands. During the wet season, jaguars killed prey disproportionately to their availability in forest and bushy grasslands. These results clearly indicate that jaguars undergo marked dynamic shifts in habitat and kill site selection in response to seasonal flooding, with forest patches becoming more important as the availability of other habitats decreases. Land conservation efforts need to consider variability in jaguar-landscape dynamics associated with seasonal flooding, given increasing pressure to modify native landscapes to more open livestock grazing areas.