Research overview: GPS-based puma ecology and the kill-site approach

This overview synthesizes a body of GPS-telemetry research that transformed understanding of puma ecology by intensively visiting location clusters to study predation, competition, and social behavior. By combining frequent fixes with fieldwork at kill sites, researchers quantified kill rates and diet, documented how scavengers and competitors exploit puma kills, and uncovered unexpectedly structured social interactions among supposedly solitary cats. The overview discusses how this cluster-based methodology, refined across multiple study systems, turned the puma into one of the best-studied large carnivores for predation and movement ecology. It also covers how telemetry revealed the energetic and behavioral costs cats incur from competitors and humans. The kill-site approach exemplifies how pairing dense location data with ground verification yields rich ecological insight far beyond bare movement maps.