Table 1.
Sites and source of data used for this study.
Figure 1.
Flow chart of process employed for the current study.
Figure 2.
Location of 25 study sites and four physiographic and prey type zones for snow leopard conservation.
(Reproduced from IUCN 2012. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2012.1. http://www.iucnredlist.org. Downloaded on 22-02-2013).
Figure 3.
Zonation dividing the four zones using Yule ‘Y’ colligation co-efficient.
Bases on potential prey available in study areas of referred. Clusters formed in to 4 zones based on potential prey (1-0 matrix) available in the study site. Nearest linkage are close to 0 farthest are towards 25. On average groups were at 25 and 20 (Zone 1), 9 (Zone 3), 23, 17 (Zone 2), 8 and 1 (Zone 4). Zone 4 separated out as a sub cluster but due to it's physiographical nature this zone is treated as distinct.
Figure 4.
Diet diversity in different zones.
Cumulative observations of FOO of prey in scats were used from each zone. Diet diversity is represented by Shannon index.
Figure 5.
Levin's standardized Index showing dietary niche breadth between the zones.
Error bars represent (±1) S.E from the mean.
Figure 6.
Mean Relative Occurrence of prey species in the diet of snow leopard across different zones.
Mean relative occurrences were calculated as averages of relative occurrences of prey item in scat in each zone (large prey >40 kg, medium prey >10 and <40 kg, small prey <10 kg).
Figure 7.
Prey weight and relative occurrence of prey in snow leopard scat.
Prey weights used were ¾ the body mass of average adult female of each prey species. Double hump indicates that snow leopard feeds primarily on large prey but may shift to small-bodied prey sub-optimally.
Table 2.
Overall frequency of occurrence and biomass consumed by snow leopard (Panthera uncia).
Figure 8.
Mean Jacobs' index values (±1 S.E.) for prey species of the snow leopard at two or more sites.
Black illustrates significantly preferred prey, open bars represent species killed in proportion to their availability and stippled bars (or no bar) indicate significantly avoided prey species. As described in the text, we analysed the data of Siberian ibex and blue sheep twice to remove one outlying result for each.
Figure 9.
Prey preferences of taxonomic groups of snow leopard prey items.
Black illustrates significantly preferred prey, open bars represent species killed in proportion to their availability and stippled bars (or no bar) indicate significantly avoided prey species.
Figure 10.
Segmented model of the relationship between the mass-rank of each prey species and the corresponding cumulative Jacobs' Index +1 value for snow leopard.
Actual prey species' masses, which correspond to the lowest, break-point, and highest prey mass-ranks are indicated.