Space use
Hyena ranges were considerably larger than expected given the small size of the two protected areas (Honer et al. 2002; Watts & Holekamp 2008), potentially further enabled by the high degree of overlap among home ranges. Other studies have shown that adapting to human-dominated environments may change the fundamental social behaviors of certain carnivore species (e.g., Widdows & Downs 2015). In our study area, hyenas from different clans exhibited consistent range overlap and are known to frequently enter one another’s ranges for anthropogenic resources, such as discarded livestock carcasses (C.E. Wilkinson, pers. obs.). This stands in contrast to some other studies (i.e., Barkeret al. 2022) and runs counter to the known territorial behaviors of spotted hyenas (Boydston et al. 2001; Watts & Holekamp 2007), indicating potential resource- or space-driven intraspecific social behavior changes which warrant further research.
Hyena home ranges expanded during the dry season, in contrast to studies in ecologically similar regions that show wildlife tends to disperse more widely in the wet season (Koziarski et al. 2016 ). Previous research has also shown that spotted hyenas have wider ranges in the wet season due to the seasonal movement and presence of their wild ungulate prey (Trinkel et al. 2004). Similarly, a study on leopards (Panthera pardus) in a mixed-use landscape revealed that they avoided protected areas during the dry season and instead favored tea plantations and forest patches (Naha et al. 2021). Our observed counterintuitive increase in hyena range sizes during the dry season rather than the rainy season could thus be due to two factors inherent to this fenced ecosystem. First, due to the electric boundary fences, many ungulate species cannot disperse during the rainy season (Wilkinson et al. 2021b), meaning hyenas have little opportunity or need to expand ranges to seasonally track wild prey. Second, the small sizes of the protected areas, coupled with an ongoing rise in lake waters in the national park (James 2022), may be driving seasonal resource limitations for spotted hyenas and causing them to expand their ranges during the dry season.