Conditional occupancy
In the winter season, we found that occupancy probabilities of all three
species were higher when another species was present, regardless of the
species (Fig 4). This suggest that carnivore species may aggregate in
certain habitats during winter, potentially driven by prey availability.
However, the occupancy probability of wildcat, decreased with increasing
forest cover when either lynx or wolf were present (Fig 4), potentially
a signal for mesopredator exclusion by apex predators in area of higher
suitability. Similarly, in autumn, all species tended to co-occur, but
this relationship was dependent on terrain ruggedness. Occupancy
probabilities for both felids, lynx and wildcat, increased with terrain
ruggedness when the other felid species was present, and decreased when
the other species was absent (Fig 5). We observed the inverse
relationship for both felids when considering the presence/absences of
wolf, such that occupancy probabilities for lynx and wildcat decreased
with increased terrain ruggedness when wolf were present and showed a
positive relationship with terrain ruggedness when wolf were absent (Fig
5). The presence of lynx and wildcat appeared to have no effect on wolf
occupancy.