Prey selection by tiger, leopard and dhole in tropical forests

A landmark study of intraguild prey partitioning in India's Nagarahole reserve, combining prey censuses with predator kill records to test how three sympatric large carnivores divide a shared ungulate community. Karanth and Sunquist showed that tigers selected the largest prey (gaur, sambar, large adults), leopards took smaller and medium prey, and dholes overlapped with both but favored medium ungulates taken by cooperative hunting. Prey body size and predator hunting mode emerged as the key axes structuring coexistence. The work demonstrated that abundant, diverse prey allows these predators to partition resources and persist together, and it established quantitative methods for linking prey abundance to predator diet that shaped tiger conservation science.