Urbanization of natural landscapes and increasing human populations have brought people and our companion animals into closer contact with wildlife, even within protected areas. To provide guidance for human–wildlife coexistence, it is therefore critical to understand the effects of anthropogenic disturbances and how well native wildlife species survive in human-dominated landscapes. We investigated the spatio-temporal responses of 10 vertebrate taxa, with an emphasis on the Endangered Eld's deer Rucervus eldii thamin, to anthropogenic disturbances in Shwesettaw Wildlife Sanctuary, Myanmar. We quantified anthropogenic disturbances as distance from human settlements, distance from a highway, and the presence of people and free-ranging dogs Canis familiaris. Anthropogenic disturbances had stronger negative impacts on the detection of native wildlife species than on occupancy. Eld's deer avoided areas close to human settlements and showed low diel activity overlap with both people and dogs, although we found a positive association with human presence at the camera-trap sites. Five species exhibited lower diel activity overlap with people in the rainy season when human activity is the highest in our study area. All studied wildlife species shifted to nocturnal activity or did not show any clear activity pattern during the cool-dry season when the presence of dogs increased. The ecological and conservation impacts of dogs are underestimated in South-east Asia, particularly in Myanmar, and this case study highlights the impacts of dogs on the temporal use of habitat by wildlife and the need for better practices in the management of dogs within protected areas.

Fossil remains and the technological complexes recorded in archaeological sites suggest that the human presence in Europe late in the early and middle Pleistocene was discontinuous. Moreover, competition for meat with other secondary consumers could have delayed the human dispersal through Europe. However, evaluation of the extent competition intensity among secondary consumers suggests this influenced the discontinuity of the human settlement of Europe between 1.1 and 0.2 Ma. Using a mathematical model, we estimate the amount of biomass available in a community for secondary consumers. The amount of available biomass is subsequently distributed among the guild of secondary consumers according to their requirements and prey preferences. Indexes that quantify the competition intensity among secondary consumers to compare the conditions in different paleoecosystems show that the competition intensity late in the early Pleistocene, early in the middle Pleistocene, and late in the middle Pleistocene does not support the view that an increase in competition intensity constrained the expansion of human populations early in the middle Pleistocene. Somewhat paradoxically, the lowest competition intensity is estimated to have occurred early in the middle Pleistocene, most likely because of an increase in the number of large herbivore species and a decrease in the number of secondary consumers. The early Pleistocene paleoecosystems supported higher competition intensity than the middle Pleistocene ecosystems, likely because of the different configuration in the food webs of these two periods (the early and middle Pleistocene).