Social structure and ecology of Panthera pardus Linnaeus, 1758 in Taï National Park, Côte d'Ivoire

Knowledge of the periods of activity and the social structure of large carnivores constitute a challenge in African forest habitats due to their cryptic behaviour and the difficulty of observing them with traditional inventory methods such as counting along line transects and recce surveys. The present study was carried out to provide reliable information on the periods of activity and the social structure of the leopard (Panthera pardus) in a protected humid forest, the Taï National Park (TNP), in Côte d'Ivoire. Over 12 months, we installed 200 camera traps in the five sectors of the TNP. The processing of trapping data made it possible to obtain one hundred video recordings of leopard. Our observations indicate that in the TNP, the leopard has cathemeral activity, 37% of which occurs at night, 47% during the day and 16% at dusk. However, we had 31 solitary adult individuals which correspond to 60% of the overall encounter rate and twenty-one (21) individuals in groups including nine (09) groups of two individuals and a group of three individuals corresponding to 34% and 6% of the encounter rate, respectively. We conclude that the leopard leads a mainly solitary life in the TNP.