Patterns of species co-occurrence in a diverse Eastern Himalayan montane carnivore community

We investigated patterns of species richness and co-occurrence in a montane carnivore community within a forested landscape in Bhutan that ranged in altitude from 2000 to 3760 m above sea level, and covered an area of approximately 140 km². Species were detected by unbaited camera traps set along animal trails and baited camera traps set away from trails. During the 6-month study, we gathered 1,329 independent mammal events from 67 camera-trap locations, of which, 145 (10.9%) were of 13 different carnivore species from five different families. Four carnivores were IUCN red-listed threatened species: tiger (Panthera tigris), marbled cat (Pardofelis marmorata), dhole (Cuon alpinus), and Asiatic black bear (Ursus thibetanus). For most camera stations where carnivores were detected, only a single carnivore species was captured on camera and there was evidence of temporal partitioning of activity between large (tiger and leopard, Panthera pardus) and small (marbled cat, golden cat Catopuma temminckii, and leopard cat Prionailurus bengalensis) felids, and between two common mustelids, the Siberian weasel (Mustela sibirica) and yellow-throated marten (Martes flavigula). Furthermore, we detected significant non-random spatial co-occurrence for most pairwise comparisons of carnivores despite the short timeframe of our study. This, combined with temporal patterns in activity, facilitates localized species co-occurrence in a diverse montane carnivore community.