Responses of mammal communities to human imprint: impacts of climate change, management and exposure to humans on carnivores and their interactions. ; Réponses des communautés de mammifères à l’empreinte humaine : impacts du changement climatique, des mesures de gestion et de la présence humaine sur les carnivores et leurs interactions.

The human population is exerting an increasing pressure on species and ecosystems. Itis now widely recognized that human activities are accelerating climate change, and theassociated changes in temperature, precipitation patterns and frequency and severity of extremeweather events are expected to become a major pressure for biodiversity. Similarly, a growingbody of literature has reported the increasing influence of disturbance associated with humanactivities on species worldwide. These global pressures are not only putting individual speciesat risk, but communities and ecosystems as well, because of cascading effects through speciesinteractions. Therefore, there is a need for a better understanding of the impacts of the humanimprint on species communities and their network of interactions.Mammalian carnivores are particularly at risk from global changes while also playingimportant roles in the functioning of communities and ecosystems, mainly through interactionswith their prey but also with their competitors. This thesis will focus on carnivores and theirinteractions and the impact of human imprint on these interactions. The goal of this thesis istwofold.In the first axis, I investigate the impact of climate change on mammalian predator-preyinteractions. First, using theoretical predator-prey population dynamics modelling, I investigatehow the interplay between climate-induced changes in prey abundance and prey vulnerabilityaffects the short- and long-term responses of predator populations to climate change. This firstchapter revealed that considering climate-induced changes in prey vulnerability to predationaffected the expected responses of predator populations to climate fluctuations, both in theshort- and long-term. Second, I investigate one mechanism underlying this theoretical approachwith field data. In this second chapter, I assess how increasing dryness influences the bodycondition of prey killed by an ambush predator, by studying the prey species and body conditionkilled by African lions (Panthera ...