Supplementary Files
Keywords
Panthera leo
Tiger
Panthera tigris
niche-overlap
interactions
South-Asia
How to Cite
Abstract
In the past, while the Asiatic lion (Panthera leo persica) and the Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) have had overlapping geographical ranges across large parts of Southern Asia, it was generally assumed that these large felid species almost never interacted. However, new historical records from the British period suggest otherwise.
In the colonial period, there was detailed awareness about the habitat preferences and the overlapping ranges of the two species. The British hunted and bagged both in and around the same local landscapes. Besides these interactions, the British also recorded eyewitness accounts of direct confrontations between lions and tigers.
Most areas where the habitats of the two species overlapped were at the interphase of two biomes—tropical dry deciduous forests and tropical thorn forests. From historical records, we can infer that lions and tigers had perhaps encountered each other quite frequently, and it is likely that lions dominated most of these skirmishes. The two species lived in a patchy matrix of open and closed habitats favourable to both, which remained intact long after one species was hunted to extinction (apart from a relict population in Saurashtra) while the other was grossly reduced in numbers.
Hence, we conclude that lions and tigers had coexisted and interacted in the Indian subcontinent for at least 10,000 years and are perhaps the last links in a long chain of predator-rich guilds that had existed throughout the Plio/Pleistocene epochs. Their co-existence is an interplay of their different ecologies rather than an internecine conflict between the species.
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