African golden cat and serval in forest-savannah transitions in Cameroon

Citation

Simo FT, Difouo GF, Kekeunou S, Ingram DJ, Kirsten I & Olson D (2021) African golden cat and serval in forest-savannah transitions in Cameroon. African Journal of Ecology, 59 (4), pp. 1063-1069. https://doi.org/10.1111/aje.12891

Abstract
First paragraph: African golden cats (Caracal aurata Temminck, 1827; hereafter, ‘golden cat’) occur in the forests and forest–savannah mosaics (hereafter, ‘FSM’) of West and Central Africa (Bahaa-el-din et al., 2015). Another medium-sized wild felid, the serval (Leptailurus [Caracal] serval Schreber, 1776), occurs in well-watered savannah and long-grass environments that are widespread across sub-Saharan Africa (Figure 1a; Thiel, 2019). Golden cats and servals are closely related felids (Johnson et al., 2006), deriving from a common ancestor approximately 5.4 million years ago (O’Brien & Johnson, 2007). They are known to be sympatric only within a small portion of their collective geographic range, including in the Central African Republic (Hickisch & Aebischer, 2013), in the FSM of the western Congo Basin (Henschel et al., 2014) and in Uganda (Mills et al., 2019).

Keywords
Deng-Deng National Park; Mpem et Djim National Park; Habitat; Cohabitation; Co-occurrence; Sympatric; Camera-trap; Caracal; Leptailurus

Journal
African Journal of Ecology: Volume 59, Issue 4