The DOI matches its Crossref record; 48 of the 48 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Hunting by male lions: ecological influences and socioecological implications
Abstract
In the Kruger National Park, male lions, Panthera leo, acquire most of their food by hunting rather than scavenging. This study, the most intensive to date of male lion ecology, showed that in savanna woodlands, with high buffalo, Syncerus caffer, densities, male lions were frequent and successful hunters. The main prey species of all male group types, but particularly nonterritorial males, was buffalo. By contrast, females preyed more frequently on the most abundant medium-sized ungulates, such as wildebeest, Connochaetes taurinus, and zebra, Equus burchelli. Thus intraspecific prey selection separation was based primarily on intersexual and, to a lesser extent, social differences. Furthermore, both nonterritorial males and pride females located their favoured prey, buffalo and medium-sized ungulates, respectively, more often than other prey. We investigated the influence of several ecological variables on the socioecology of male lions, particularly as we had determined that territorial males spent little time with their pride females and tended to hunt by themselves in their respective male coalitions. Further analysis showed that in a range of ecosystems in southern and eastern Africa the proportion of time territorial males spent with, and thus scavenged from, their pride females was strongly influenced by vegetation structure, and therefore probably by the assemblage of available ungulates. In open systems, territorial males were, therefore, likely to be encountered with pride females, whereas in more wooded areas they were likely to be encountered away from their pride females. We suggest that this is because vegetation structure influences food/prey availability and hunting success and influences territory maintenance and/or cub defence. (c) 1998 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.
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“We limited the maximum extent of the viewshed to 300 m because this is the maximum distance from which lions initiate stalking hunts [52].”
From Effects of Vegetation Structure on the Location of Lion Kill Sites in African Thicket (2016) · cites this paper as [52]
In the citing paper
“Impala were more often encountered by lions in dense bush [52], where darkness was considered less important because lions could rely on the cover provided by the vegetation [23].”
From Effects of Vegetation Structure on the Location of Lion Kill Sites in African Thicket (2016) · cites this paper as [52]
In the citing paper
“Whereas buffalo are a preferred prey species in several savanna ecosystems [21,57,58], they constituted less than 5% of kills found during our study, and less than 1% of male kills (Table 5), despite male lions specifically targeting buffalo elsewhere [52].”
From Effects of Vegetation Structure on the Location of Lion Kill Sites in African Thicket (2016) · cites this paper as [52]
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Flagged first, then by citations
Research works printed but not linked: 3
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“Adult males in wild prides are known to have a low level of overall social interaction [44,57].”
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“Adult male lions maintain a territory largely contiguous with that of their home range [36,53,54].”
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Prey depletion and the effect of group size on cooperative hunting in African wild dogs
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Activity of Asiatic lions in relation to activity of prey and kleptoparasitism
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“So , similarly to findings in sexually dimorphic terrestrial top predators ( Panthera leo linnaeus , 1758; Funston et al. 1998; Canis lupus linnaeus , 1758; Sand et al. 2006; MacNulty et al. 2009), the implications of size/sex/age in the choice and implementation of foraging/hunting strategies may…”
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Graf, J. A. (2008) · ResearchSpace (University of KwaZulu-Natal)
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Bartleson, R. J. (2003)
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Павловна, М. Е., Buyanova, I. S., & Ginsburg-Shik, Y. A. (2021) · Biology Bulletin · doi:10.1134/s1062359021090144
“Kleptoparasitism is typical of insects (Coelho et al., 2019), fish (Shodipo et al., 2019), reptiles (Cooper and Pérez-Mellado, 2003), birds (Brockmann and Barnard, 1979), and mammals (Funston et al., 1998).”
BackgroundSalguero‐Gómez, R., & Gamelon, M. (2021) · doi:10.1093/oso/9780198838609.002.0001
Tomeka, T. O., Kissui, B. M., Ukio, I. G., Mushi, F. R., Mremi, R. F., Roberts, N. J., Holyoak, M., & Jiang, G. (2025) · Ecology and Evolution · doi:10.1002/ece3.71787
“Consumption was considered to be one third and two thirds as much as adult females for cubs and subadults respectively, while male lion consumption was assumed to be 1.5 times that of adult females (Funston et al. 1998; Packer et al. 1990).”
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Carlin, S. (2015) · Epsilon Archive for Student Projects (University of Southampton)
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“…size dimorphism (Bolnick et al. 2003; Meiri et al. 2014), where sexes of different sizes consume different sized prey to ensure prey profitability is maximized in the population as observed in mink ( Mustela vision ; Birks and Dunstone 1985) and African lion ( Panthera leo ; Funston et al. 1998).”
Quantifying the control laws governing terminal attack in lions
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Getz (2001) · doi:10.1644/1545-1542(2001)082
Metadata
- Authors
- FUNSTON, P. J., MILLS, M. G. L., BIGGS, H. C., & RICHARDSON, P. R. K.
- Affiliations
- University of Pretoria (ZA)
- South African National Parks (ZA)
- Venue
- Animal Behaviour
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 1998-12
- Volume
- 56
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 1333-1345
- ISSN
- 0003-3472 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2022828912
- Cited by
- 133
- References
- 48
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 6 · 2018: 1 · 2017: 8 · 2016: 6 · 2015: 4 · 2014: 3 · 2013: 8 · 2012: 3
- FWCI
- 1.91
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Animal Behaviour (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecology › Wildlife Ecology and Conservation
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics › Primate Behavior and Ecology
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics › Animal Behavior and Reproduction
- Keywords
- lion, hunting behavior, prey selection, socioecology, territoriality, buffalo, wildebeest, zebra, vegetation structure, savanna woodland, hunting success, Kruger National Park
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