Navigating a fragmented world: multiscale and behavior-specific habitat selection of tigers in a human-dominated landscape of India

Large carnivores in human-dominated landscapes face trade-offs between resource acquisition and risk avoidance, with habitat selection varying across spatial scales and behavioral contexts. Understanding how tigers (Panthera tigris) select habitats is crucial for effective conservation in shared landscapes. We quantified multiscale and behavior-specific habitat selection by tigers. Specifically, we aimed (1) to quantify selection at the landscape (second-order) and fine (third-order) scales, and (2) to assess behavior-specific selection across life stages (pre-dispersal, dispersal, and post-dispersal). We monitored 15 subadult tigers using GPS telemetry (2016–2022) in the Eastern Vidarbha Landscape, India. We used resource selection functions to evaluate landscape-scale habitat selection. At finer scales, we used hidden Markov models and integrated step-selection functions to quantify behavior-specific habitat selection and movement across the life stages. At the landscape scale, tigers selected forests, dense vegetation cover, minor and primary roads, while avoiding agriculture, built-up, fragmented patches, highways, human settlements, and areas with high human populations. At finer scales, pre-dispersal individuals selected forests, grasslands, and agriculture during resting, selected forest edges, and increased nocturnal movement while travelling. Dispersers selected forests with dense vegetation cover and showed increased nocturnal movement. Post-dispersal individuals rested in dense vegetation, avoided grasslands, while area-restricted movement involved selection of forests and grasslands with increased nocturnal movement, a pattern also observed during travelling. Multiscale behavior-specific analyses showed that tigers adjust their habitat selection in response to ecological and anthropogenic features. Conserving forests, mitigating highway barriers, and protecting riparian corridors are critical for maintaining functional connectivity and coexistence in shared landscapes.