behind the big cat's and bear's, who is the top predator?

[Pckts]

Quote:Leopards killed Sambar Stags at a greater frequency in Yala, which has no lions or tigers:

Incorrect, only 4 Sambar appeared in the entire study and again the highest number of kills occurred from Chital, like they do anywhere else.
That's 4 out of 44 kills and not to mention they could of all been done by one Leopard who specializes in Sambar Kills, they could of been scavenged or of course Killed by the Leopard, but either way it's again a very minimal number. 

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"In  RNP  86.4%  of  scat  samples  (N  =  214) contained  hair  from  medium  to  large  mammal prey  (axis  deer,  water  buffalo,  wild  boar  and sambar)  consistent  with  previous  observations here  (Amerasinghe  et  al.  1990;  Amerasinghe  & Ekanayake  1992).  Leopards  tend  to  prefer  prey between  10–40  kg  with  the  strongest  preference for animals 23–25 kg (Hayward et al. 2006). Young axis deer fit this size (Table 1) but overall axis deer are  taken  in  proportion  to  their  availability  in RNP.  Conversely  sambar,  the  largest  deer available  here,  seem  to  be  selected  by  leopards. Seidensticker  (1976)  found  leopards  selecting  for smaller  age/sex  classes  of  sambar  in  Royal Chitwan  National  Park,  Nepal,  however  in  RNP 75% (N  =  4) of  sambar  carcasses  detected were  of adult  males  (215  kg,  Santiapillai  et  al.  1981). Despite  potential  bias in  carcass  detection toward larger age/sex classes and a small sample size''



" particularly  that carnivore  population  density  appears  determined  by  prey  availability,  not  competition  with dominant inter-specifics."

Quote:Leopards kill Sambar stags, and kill rates increase in areas without other serious competitors:

The Sambar Stag and adult female kills increased when Tigers were temporarily extirpated

" From the present study it was

understood that, when there was a large number of
tigers (12–16) in the study area (1988–1990), leopard was dependent on lesser bodied prey species
and occupied broader diet niche breadth than tiger
(Sankar & Johnsingh 2002). But after the extermination of tigers, diet of leopard completely shifted to
large bodied ungulates (Mondal et al. 2011). After
the re-introduction of tiger in the study area, both
the predators utilized the prey species in a similar
manner and showed similar preference towards large
ungulates. The dietary overlap between leopard and
tiger was also increased from 54% (1988–1990) to
94% (present study). There was a noticeable difference observed in the selection of sex and age class of
prey species by these two predators, as leopard largely
hunted fawns and females of large ungulates, while
tiger largely hunted adult males, as observed by kill
records (Figure 8). At present, there are only six reintroduced tigers in Sariska TR. With the increase in
the number of re-introduced tigers a clearer picture
of prey utilization and dietary interaction between
these two top predators in the study area is expected"

 

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While yes, Sambar numbers did go Up in Leopard prey between 2 studies that were 18 years apart, they continued to go up after the reintroduction of Tigers and not only did they go up but Chital numbers went down after the reintroduction. Also something to note is that not only did Leopard see an increase but so did the Tiger, both jumped up almost the same % between the 1990 study and the 2009 study.
Which I'm sure has more to do with an increase in prey biomass especially in the species where we see the significant jump. 
Also note that 1990 study where some how Tigers take Chital more often than Leopards and Leopards took Sambar more often than Tigers, that alone should be a red flag that the two studies are have very different conclusions. Reply