Fig. 4: Densities of elk and large carnivores along with rates of interference competition at cougar kills through time.

a Densities of wolf (green; 1995–2020)⁷¹, cougar (orange; 1988–1993, 1999–2004, 2014–2017)^26,72, grizzly bear (pink; 1987–2020)^16,17, black bear (dark green; 2017–2018)¹⁸, and elk (purple; 1987–2022)⁷³ on Yellowstone National Park’s Northern Range, USA from 1987–2022. b Wolf/bear presence and displacement at cougar kills across each cougar monitoring phase (dark green sections of timeline). Above the year 2010 shows a reference key for interpreting each pie-donut chart. Inner pie slices represent the proportion of cougar kills detected by the wolf or bear, with dark green representing undetected kills and dark orange detected kills. The outer donut represents the proportion of kills a wolf/bear displaced a cougar from, with light green representing kills that were not detected, light orange representing kills that were detected and possibly scavenged on by a wolf or bear, but likely after the cougar had left the kill, and dark orange representing kills that a wolf/bear actively stole and displaced a cougar from. Only spring-summer kills were included when estimating bear presence and displacement because of their winter hibernation. The number of cougar-kills included for evaluating presence/displacements by each competitor during each research phase are shown above each pie-donut chart. Cougar (by Margot Michaud), grizzly bear (by @xgirouxb), black bear (by Margot Michaud), and wolf (by Margot Michaud) PhyloPics are all dedicated as public domain under licenses CC0 1.0 or PDM 1.0. The bull elk carcass graphic was created and provided by Kira Cassidy.