TY - JOUR TI - Humans disrupt access to prey for large African carnivores AU - Mills, Kirby L AU - Harris, Nyeema C A2 - O'Connell, Lauren A A2 - Rutz, Christian A2 - Heydinger, John VL - 9 PY - 2020 DA - 2020/11/18 SP - e60690 C1 - eLife 2020;9:e60690 DO - 10.7554/eLife.60690 UR - https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.60690 AB - Wildlife respond to human presence by adjusting their temporal niche, possibly modifying encounter rates among species and trophic dynamics that structure communities. We assessed wildlife diel activity responses to human presence and consequential changes in predator-prey overlap using 11,111 detections of 3 large carnivores and 11 ungulates across 21,430 camera trap-nights in West Africa. Over two-thirds of species exhibited diel responses to mainly diurnal human presence, with ungulate nocturnal activity increasing by 7.1%. Rather than traditional pairwise predator-prey diel comparisons, we considered spatiotemporally explicit predator access to several prey resources to evaluate community-level trophic responses to human presence. Although leopard prey access was not affected by humans, lion and spotted hyena access to three prey species significantly increased when prey increased their nocturnal activity to avoid humans. Human presence considerably influenced the composition of available prey, with implications for prey selection, demonstrating how humans perturb ecological processes via behavioral modifications. KW - Panthera leo KW - Crocuta crocuta KW - Panthera pardus JF - eLife SN - 2050-084X PB - eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd ER -