Predation of wildlife by domestic cats in a Neotropical city: a multi-factor issue

Domestic cats are a potential risk for native fauna in the Neotropics. Intrinsic (age, weight, sex, color) and extrinsic (nocturnal confinement, time spent outside the home, distance to green areas, etc.) factors can influence the type and quantity of prey that cats take to their homes. The study goal was to evaluate domestic cat predation in a Neotropical city. We intend to answer the following questions: (1) Which is the richness, dominance and abundance of prey captured by domestic cats? (2) Which are the extrinsic or intrinsic factors that most influence prey capture by domestic cats? We predict that: (a) cats will capture a large diversity of native wildlife and (b) extrinsic factors will have a greater effect compared intrinsic factors due to the innate predatory cat’s behavior. We chose 120 cats from 44 households in the city of Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico. We documented the richness, dominance and abundance of wildlife species captured and brought home by cats during March to August 2019 and those intrinsic and extrinsic factors that modulate their predatory behavior. The cats captured 246 prey items, 35.8% were reptiles, 23.2% invertebrates, 17.9% amphibians, 15.4% birds and 7.7% mammals. The prey items belonged to 64 taxa (17 birds, 17 invertebrates, 15 reptiles, nine mammals and six amphibians). The lizard Sceloporus variabilis was the most captured prey. Of the prey items, 93.5% were native and 6.5% non-native. Five intrinsic and 5 extrinsic factors contributed most to the predation events, of which cat stripe color, time spent by the cats outside of the home and nocturnal confinement were the most important. These results allow us to understand the harmful effect of cats on wildlife in a Neotropical city.