The home range of fishing cats (Prionailurus viverrinus), found in parts of South and Southeast Asia, could be more expansive than previously thought, a recent GPS-collaring study focusing in and around Koshi Tappu Wildlife Reserve in southeastern Nepal suggests. The study also found that some of these small cats live in human-dominated landscapes round the clock, contrary to popular belief that they only visit such areas at night, preferring to live within protected areas during the day. “The findings of the study are important as so many individuals were GPS-collared and tracked for the first time,” said Rama Mishra, lead author of the study. As part of the study, Mishra and her team captured and collared 11 fishing cats — six females and five males — with satellite GPS collars and monitored their movement between August 2021 and January 2023. However, one male was found dead 40 days after collaring and one female after three months. A sub-adult fishing cat captured in Nepal for collaring. Image courtesy of Rama Mishra. These collars collected location data, which was then used to estimate the cats’ home ranges using the minimum convex polygon (MCP) and area-corrected autocorrelated kernel density estimation (AKDE) methods. Before the study, researchers had collared only up to six individuals at one go so far. “GPS-collaring is very expensive, and it takes a lot of time to do it,” said Mishra, and that’s why the sample sizes in GPS-collaring studies seem small compared to other studies employing other methods such…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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