A challenge for macroecological studies is collecting sufficient empirical data to study
large-scale patterns of distribution or abundance. Comprehensive surveys for presence cannot be
conducted at such large scales for most carnivores, including the puma. However, habitatsuitability
models were recently developed to estimate the area of occupancy (i.e., presence),
rather than just the extent of occurrence, within the geographic ranges of all terrestrial mammals.
We used these models to measure the distribution of high-quality habitat within the geographic
range of the puma, and evaluate the potential for the puma to serve as an umbrella species for
carnivore conservation in the Western Hemisphere. The extent of the puma’s geographic range
covered a total area of over 22 million km2, and 75% of that area was high-quality habitat.
However, only 6% of this high-quality habitat occurred in protected areas. The puma has
considerable potential to serve as an umbrella species. The puma’s high-quality habitat overlaps
75 ± 8% (mean ± SE) of the high-quality habitat of 11 sympatric felid species. Puma habitat
supports more than double the mean species richness of mammalian carnivores (9.34) than
unsuitable puma habitat (4.37). In addition to providing valuable life-history data for
macroecological analyses, these models allow species co-occurrence patterns to be quickly
estimated at a fine spatial resolution, which has historically been an impediment to evaluating the
utility of umbrella species
