A trail camera in Idaho captured footage of a bear

USGS researchers at the USGS Idaho Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit investigated space use among five predator species (black bear, bobcat, coyote, mountain lion, and gray wolf across three temporal scales in northern Idaho. The team used camera trap data to test whether potentially subordinate predators spatially avoided dominant predators and how prey availability influenced those relationships. The researchers found few instances of subordinate predators spatially avoiding dominant predators, and only at the finest temporal scale of the analyses. Instead, habitat features generally influenced predator space use patterns at coarser scales, whereas prey and competitor presence influenced space use patterns at finer scales.