Research overview: jaguar movement in the Pantanal and Amazon

This overview synthesizes telemetry research on jaguars across the contrasting landscapes of the Brazilian Pantanal wetlands and the Amazon forest, where GPS collars have revealed how home-range size, movement, and habitat use vary with prey density and environment. In the prey-rich Pantanal, jaguars can hold relatively compact ranges and famously hunt aquatic prey such as caiman, whereas in the forested Amazon ranges are larger and movement structured by rivers and terrain. The overview discusses how flooding seasonality, riparian corridors, and human land use, including ranching and deforestation, shape jaguar movement, and how these data inform corridor protection within the broader Jaguar Corridor Initiative. Comparative movement studies across jaguar habitats illuminate how a single wide-ranging cat adjusts its spatial ecology to dramatically different ecosystems, guiding region-specific conservation.