Anthropogenic Disturbances Drive Domestic Dog Use of Atlantic Forest Protected Areas

Domestic dog is the most successful invasive mammalian predator species, and reducing its ecological impacts on wildlife is a central conservation goal globally. Free-ranging dogscan negatively interact with wildlife at multiple levels, posing issues for biodiversity conservation in tropical forests, especially in fragmented Atlantic Forest. To optimize future control programs, it is necessary to identify the main factors influencing their habitat use, particularly in natural reserves. We combined camera trappingdata and occupancy models to characterize habitat use of dogs in six Atlantic Forest protectedareas (134–36,000 ha). Our results show that dogs were more likely to use sites (Ψ^ ≥ 0.90) having higher housing density (≥4.00 houses/km2) or higher proportion of croplands and pasture (≥75%) relative to sites with no houses (Ψ^ = 0.23 ± 0.10) or lower proportion of croplands and pasture (Ψ^ = 0.34 ± 0.08). In addition, dogs had higher detection probability at camera locations on unpaved roads(p^ = ...