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Wild Boar Used a Broad, Edge-oriented Habitat Niche in Tongboshan Reserve

Wild boar standing in natural vegetation
Research · Ecology

Wild boar (Sus scrofa) occupied a broad, edge-oriented habitat niche alongside black muntjac (Muntiacus crinifrons) and Reeves’s muntjac (Muntiacus reevesi) in Tongboshan National Nature Reserve in Jiangxi, China. A three-year camera-trap study found clear differences in how the three ungulates responded to vegetation, topography, water and human disturbance.

Researchers used camera records collected between 2021 and 2024 and retained 103 spatially independent occurrence points after filtering: 25 for black muntjac, 43 for Reeves’s muntjac and 35 for wild boar. The models then compared how vegetation, topography, water availability and human disturbance were associated with the occurrence of each species.

Wild boar favoured edges and bamboo-rich habitats

Wild boar showed broad ecological flexibility and were especially associated with forest edges, bamboo stands and bamboo–conifer interfaces. Their predicted suitable habitat covered about 34 km², or roughly 31% of the reserve. Reeves’s muntjac had the broadest predicted suitable area at about 45 km², while black muntjac had the narrowest at about 18 km² and was more strongly associated with higher-elevation, closed and low-disturbance forest.

The strongest spatial niche overlap occurred between Reeves’s muntjac and wild boar. Black muntjac overlapped much less with wild boar, sharing only about 13 km² of predicted suitable habitat. The authors interpret the contrasting habitat breadths and preferences as evidence that spatial niche differentiation helps the three ungulates coexist within the same mountain reserve.

Sources and image credit

  1. Yao, J., Hu, X., Tian, J., Lv, F., Yang, R., Huang, Z., & Zhai, J. (2026). Niche partitioning promotes coexistence: Habitat suitability and spatial overlap of three sympatric ungulates in a subtropical mountain reserve. Ecology and Evolution, 16(3), e73248. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.73248Primary open-access research article first published 20 March 2026 under CC BY 4.0. Camera-trap records from Tongboshan National Nature Reserve were spatially filtered to 103 independent occurrence points and modelled against 12 environmental predictors. Wild boar had 33.82 km² of predicted suitable habitat and showed broad tolerance with associations to forest edges and bamboo; niche overlap was highest between wild boar and Reeves’s muntjac (D=0.822; I=0.969).

Image: Raghvendra26 — wild boar photographed in India; Wikimedia Commons; representative species image, not an animal recorded in the Tongboshan study · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source

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