Diet, morphology, and intraguild predation in Carnivora

Donadio and Buskirk tested what predicts the intensity of interactions among carnivores, including both killing and avoidance. Analyzing a broad dataset, they found that intraguild predation and aggression peak at intermediate body-size ratios and increase with dietary similarity, while phylogenetic relatedness mattered less than ecological overlap. The results refined earlier work by quantifying the size-ratio window of maximum risk and showing that competition for shared prey drives lethal interactions. For felids the study clarifies why species of contrasting sizes, such as lions and cheetahs or pumas and smaller cats, engage in suppression, and it provides a predictive framework for which carnivore pairs will exhibit strong intraguild conflict in any community.