the “New Conservation” movement 3), including human-dominated landscapes. Though conservation efforts have traditionally focused on preserving pristine habitat, there is now growing interest in enhancing biodiversity in already transformed ecosystems (e.g. The conversion of wildlands to developed habitat is a pervasive threat to native species, and tends to create biotically homogenous communities 1 differing strongly from their historical norm 2.

Thus, though human-dominated landscapes can provide sufficient resources for apex carnivores, they do not necessarily preserve their ecological relationships. Thus, niche expansion followed human expansion over both time and space, indicating that an important top predator is interacting with prey in novel ways. We show that 25 years ago, cougars inhabiting these same urban interfaces possessed diets that were intermediate. We detected a shift in resource use, from near complete specialization on native herbivores in wildlands to greater use of exotic and invasive species by cougars in contemporary urban interfaces.

We evaluated the isotopic niche of an apex carnivore, the cougar ( Puma concolor), over broad spatiotemporal scales and in a region characterized by rapid landscape change. Yet, little is known about processes regulating these novel ecosystems, or behaviours employed by species adapting to them. There is growing recognition that developed landscapes are important systems in which to promote ecological complexity and conservation.

Desert Puma by Kenneth A. Logan