Abstract：
Mammalian communities inhabiting temperate grasslands are of conservation concern globally, especially in Central Asia, where livestock numbers have dramatically increased in recent decades, leading to overgrazing and land-use change. Yet, how this pervasive presence of livestock herds affects the community of wild mammals remains largely unstudied. We used systematic camera trapping at 216 sites across remote, mountainous areas of the Mongolian Altai Mountains to assess the spatial and temporal patterns of occurrence and the interspecific relationships within a mammalian community that includes different categories of livestock. By adopting a recently proposed multispecies occupancy model that incorporates interspecific correlation in occupancy, we found several statistically strong correlations in occupancy among species pairs, with the majority involving livestock. The sign of such associations was markedly species-dependent, with larger wild species of conservation concern, namely, snow leopard and Siberian ibex, avoiding livestock presence. As predicted, we found evidence of a positive correlation in occupancy between predators and their respective main prey. Contrary to our expectations, a number of intraguild species pairs also showed positive co-occurrence, with no evidence of spatiotemporal niche partitioning. Overall, our study suggests that livestock encroaching into protected areas influences the whole local community of wild mammals. Though pastoralism has coexisted with wildlife for millennia in central Asian grasslands, our findings suggest that policies and practices to decrease the pressure of livestock husbandry on wildlife are needed, with special attention on large species, such as the snow leopard and its wild prey, which seem to be particularly sensitive to this pervasive livestock presence.
摘要：
居住在温带草原上的哺乳动物社区在全球范围内受到保护关注，尤其是在中亚，近几十年来，牲畜数量急剧增加，导致过度放牧和土地利用变化。然而，牲畜群的普遍存在如何影响野生哺乳动物的群落仍未研究。我们在偏远地区的216个地点使用了系统的摄像头诱捕，蒙古阿尔泰山的山区，以评估包括不同类别牲畜的哺乳动物群落内的时空发生模式和种间关系。通过采用最近提出的多物种占用模型，该模型结合了占用中的种间相关性，我们发现物种对之间的占有率有几个统计上很强的相关性，大多数涉及牲畜。这种关联的迹象明显取决于物种，与保护更大的野生物种有关，即,雪豹和西伯利亚山羊,避免牲畜的存在。正如预测的那样，我们发现捕食者和他们各自的主要猎物之间的占用率正相关的证据。与我们的期望相反,许多内部物种对也显示出积极的共现，没有时空生态位划分的证据。总的来说,我们的研究表明，牲畜入侵保护区会影响整个野生哺乳动物社区。尽管在中亚草原上，畜牧业已经与野生动植物共存了数千年，我们的研究结果表明，需要采取政策和措施来减少畜牧业对野生动物的压力，特别关注大型物种，比如雪豹和它的野生猎物，这似乎对这种无处不在的牲畜特别敏感。
