Fig 1.
Distribution of the Asiatic cheetah in Iran.
Red patches denote to cheetah protected areas confirmed between 2000 and 2020. Yellow areas and their associated numbers represent key cheetah protected areas investigated for faecal samples between 2002 and 2016. 1) Touran, 2) Miandasht, 3) Naybandan, 4) Dareanjir, 5) Bafq and 6) Ariz. The latter three collectively are labelled as Yazd in this study. The map was modified after [33].
Table 1.
The zoological records in historic range of cheetahs in Asia (1890–1980) which included data on prey and habitat selection of cheetahs.
Latin names of prey species are as the following: Goitered gazelle (Gazella subgutturosa), Saiga (Saiga tatarica), Urial (Ovis vignei), Chinkara (Gazella bennettii), kulan (Equus hemionus), blackbuck (Antilope cervicapra) and nilgai (Boselaphus tragocamelus).
Fig 2.
Quantification of different prey species in the diet of Asiatic cheetahs based on five published faecal analyses sampled between 2002 and 2016 across key cheetah protected areas (Yazd, Touran, Miandasht and Naybandan) in Iran [2, 4, 58–60].
Yazd represented three closely located protected areas, including Dareanjir, Bafq and Ariz. Frequency of occurrence is defined as the frequency of that prey item in the total number of faecal samples.
Fig 3.
Left) social structure of Asiatic cheetahs in relation to different types of ungulate and right) sex composition of wild ungulates killed by Asiatic cheetahs based on opportunistic sightings made by wildlife conservation rangers between 2000 and 2021 in Iran.
Table 2.
Results of sequential likelihood ratio tests of multinomial models with random intercept testing the effect of season, social structure, and protected area on prey choice.
LR stat. = likelihood ratio statistic (difference of residual deviance); NA = Not Applicable.
Fig 4.
Temporal patterns of Asiatic cheetah hunting efforts for two types of prey, mountain ungulates such as urial and bezoar goat versus plain-dwelling ungulates such as goitered gazelle and chinkara, based on opportunistic sightings (2000–2021).
Gray areas underneath density curves represent the overlapped area.