Matt was invited to India’s Gir National Park (home of the only lion population outside of Africa) by the International Big Cat Alliance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Big_Cat_Alliance; @IBCA_official) for a conference as part of World Lion Day in August 2024. What an opportunity – seeing the Gir lions in the flesh, and catching up with a student he is co-supervising (Prashant Mahajan). Unfortunately, the horrific floods in Gujarat and Kerala meant the conference was cancelled, but an online version went ahead.
Matt spoke about the impact of a drying climate on the prey preferences of lions in South Africa. He had 101 years of data from six savanna protected areas to test whether prey preferences changed in above average or below average rainfall years.
It turns out that there are winners and losers from climate change, although the vast majority of species are uniformly selected by lions reflecting the long evolutionary history of interactions between predators and their prey (e.g., buffalo). Several smaller (sub-optimal) species become more preferred during above average rainfall – likely because there is more vegetation cover available to conceal lions and enable them to opportunistically kill species (e.g., blesbok, nyala or duiker). A couple of species are more frequently killed by lions during drier periods (kudu and eland), and these are the species that may be most at risk at the peak of global warming.
Now to get it published!
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