Can landscape heterogeneity promote carnivore coexistence in human-dominated landscapes?

Context Interspecific competition can limit species distributions unless competitors partition niche space to enable coexistence. Landscape heterogeneity can facilitate niche partitioning and enable coexistence, but land-use change is restructuring terrestrial ecosystems globally with unknown consequences for species interactions. Objectives We tested the relationship between landscape heterogeneity and carnivore co-occurrence in natural and human-dominated ecosystems to assess the landscape-mediated impacts of anthropogenic change on coexistence. Methods We used boosted regression trees to model the distributions and co-occurrence of two competing forest carnivores, American martens and fishers, at two contrasting sites in the Great Lakes region, USA: a “natural” site largely devoid of human impacts and a “human-dominated” site with substantial development and a history of land-use change. We assessed the importance of climate and habitat variables for each species, measured spatial niche overlap, and quantified co-occurrence as a function of compositional (patch richness), configurational (landscape shape), and topographical (elevation range) heterogeneity per site. Results We observed significant differences in the effect of heterogeneity on co-occurrence between sites. The natural landscape exhibited little niche overlap and co-occurrence had a significant, positive relationship with heterogeneity. Conversely, the human-dominated site exhibited high niche overlap with variable effects of heterogeneity on co-occurrence. Elevation, snowpack, and development had strong, contrasting effects on marten and fisher distributions, suggesting that differential use of habitat and anthropogenic features facilitates coexistence. Conclusions Heterogeneity can facilitate coexistence, but too much may undermine carnivore coexistence in human-dominated landscapes where habitat and space are limited. Moreover, future climate change will likely erode niche partitioning among martens and fishers, with particularly strong consequences for coexistence in human-dominated landscapes and at range boundaries.