Coexistence under constraint: Spatiotemporal co‐occurrence in a dryland carnivore guild

Interspecific competition plays a crucial role in shaping the structure and dynamics of large carnivore guilds. Extreme temperatures and heightened resource heterogeneity in drylands can present additional challenges to intraguild coexistence, potentially making dryland carnivore guilds particularly susceptible to climate change and anthropogenic stressors. We employed multispecies occupancy modeling to analyze data from 232 camera trap locations throughout eight reserves in Iran over 18,806 trapping days to investigate spatiotemporal co‐occurrence within a guild of large dryland carnivores, including Asiatic cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus venaticus), gray wolves (Canis lupus), Persian leopards (Panthera pardus tulliana), and striped hyaenas (Hyaena hyaena). Furthermore, we evaluated temporal overlap and differences in diel activity between Asiatic cheetahs and sympatric carnivores across seasons to assess seasonal shifts in temporal activity. We found evidence of spatial segregation between cheetahs and leopards and a negative association between cheetah occupancy and proximity to humans. Cheetahs displayed the highest temporal overlap with wolves, followed by leopards and hyaenas, while seasonality was not found to influence the temporal activity of any of the carnivores. Our findings highlight the risk of potential competition between cheetahs and wolves and underscore the need to maintain sufficient water sources and adequate ungulate prey diversity and abundance to diminish the risk of increased resource scarcity‐induced competition in drylands. This study further reinforces the importance of mitigating anthropogenic disturbance for the last Asiatic cheetahs.