| Summary: | Understanding the effect of anthropogenic disturbance, and its interaction with carnivores
and their prey, is crucial to support the conservation of threatened carnivores, particularly in
rapidly changing landscapes. Based on systematic camera-trap sampling of four protected
areas in Riau Province of central Sumatra, we assessed the habitat occupancy and spatiotemporal
overlap between people, potential carnivore prey, and four threatened species of
medium-sized or large carnivores: Sumatran tigers (Panthera tigris sumatrae), Malayan sun
bears (Helarctos malayanus), dholes (Cuon alpinus), and Sunda clouded leopards (Neofelis
diardi). To assess spatial overlap of target species, we used single-species occupancy models
and applied a Species Interaction Factor (SIF) to conditional two-species occupancy
models. We also used kernel density estimation (KDE) to assess temporal overlap among
these species. Our habitat use models showed that altitude (elevation) strongly influenced
the occupancy of all large carnivores and potential prey species. Except for Sunda clouded
leopards, the occurrence of large carnivore species was positively related to the spatial cooccurrence
of humans (SIF > 1). In addition, we found that sun bears and dholes both exhibited
high spatial overlap with tigers, and that sun bears alone exhibited high temporal overlap
with people. Our findings contribute to an improved understanding of the contemporary
ecology of carnivores and their prey in rapidly changing, southeast Asian landscapes. Such
knowledge is important to the conservation and recovery of large carnivores in conservation
hotspots that are increasingly dominated by humans across Sumatra, as well as globally
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