Date of Award:

8-2026

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Science (MS)

Department:

Wildland Resources

Committee Chair(s)

David C. Stoner

Committee

David C. Stoner

Committee

Kathryn A. Schoenecker

Committee

Andre de Lima Moraes

Abstract

There is a growing recognition that animal species considered generalists (having a broad and varied diet), are actually specialists, a collection of individuals with different preferences and strategies known as specializations. The diet of a specialist depends on the variety and quantity of available food options, and their own ability to take what they need. Mountain lions (Puma concolor) are known for their ability and tendency to hunt large prey, such as elk (Cervus canadensis) and mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus), but despite the fact they overlap with other potential large prey, like feral horses (Equus caballus), in many places across the American west, most mountain lion populations have not made them a regular part of their diet. To investigate why this might be, we conducted a study in southeast Nevada to test our hypothesis that differences in individual mountain lion diet are influenced by a combination of three factors: (1) local prey availability, (2) hunting habitat within their home ranges, and (3) preference. We investigated kill-sites of 17 radio-collared mountain lions (10 females, 7 males) who generated a total of 404 horse kills and 574 mule deer kills from 2018-2025 to determine diet composition. We used a grid of 57 game cameras to estimate prey availability, and open-source satellite data to estimate habitat availability. Our findings reveal that horses and mule deer are being killed in different types of vegetation: mule deer in areas with higher shrub cover and dense tree cover, horses in areas with more grass or herbaceous growth and farther from dense tree cover. We discovered that 47% of mountain lions were specializing and 23% were selecting on either horse or mule deer, meaning their preference for these species could not be explained by habitat or prey availability - unlike the 30% who did select prey based on opportunity. These results indicate that accounting for individual preference among mountain lions may be necessary to successfully manage both predator and prey.

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