Research overview: camera-trap co-occurrence of pumas and prey

An overview of how camera-trap arrays and occupancy modeling are used to study the spatial and temporal relationships between pumas and their prey. By recording where and when cats and prey are detected, researchers infer habitat overlap, activity-time partitioning, fine-scale avoidance and the influence of predation risk on prey distribution, complementing telemetry-based kill studies. This survey synthesizes co-occurrence and spatiotemporal-overlap methods, their assumptions and pitfalls, and what they reveal about puma-deer and broader predator-prey interactions, including evidence for landscapes of fear. It connects noninvasive monitoring to questions about predation risk, prey behavior and competitor avoidance. The topic highlights how camera traps have expanded the toolkit for studying cryptic felid predator-prey dynamics at the community scale.