Research overview: niche partitioning among coexisting small wildcats

Many landscapes host several small cats at once, and this overview reviews how they coexist through niche partitioning. Studies of Neotropical and Asian cat assemblages show that sympatric species divide resources along axes of time, space, body size, and diet, reducing direct competition. The diurnal jaguarundi separates temporally from the nocturnal ocelot and margay; the arboreal margay exploits the canopy while the ocelot hunts the ground; and body-size differences sort prey selection so larger cats take larger prey. Camera-trap and dietary research increasingly quantifies these patterns, revealing structured predator communities rather than random overlap. Understanding partitioning is valuable because habitat change can collapse these axes, intensifying competition and reshaping which small cats persist as landscapes are simplified and modified.