Melanie Clapham, Russell C Van Horn, Hanna Meyer, Wouter Hantson, Luis Arturo Román-Luzuriaga, Flavio Salvador Torres Manitio, Owen T Nevin, Aleš Vorel

Habitat loss and degradation are major drivers of global biodiversity decline, including for the globally vulnerable and locally endangered Andean bear (Tremarctos ornatus). Although scent-marking behaviour offers important insights into communication and social organization, no previous study has examined marking sites in a spatially explicit and exclusive manner for habitat-use assessment or species distribution modelling (SDM). We aimed to identify environmental and anthropogenic predictors shaping the spatial distribution of Andean bear marking sites in the montane cloud forests of the Eastern Cordillera of the Ecuadorian Andes, to map additional areas with a high probability of marking-site and general species occurrence, and to assess differences in bear presence and behaviour between areas with and without evidence of human use. We documented 234 marking sites and an equal number of pseudo-absence locations to develop an SDM using a Random Forests algorithm. We evaluated model performance using standard metrics and a fully independent field validation conducted after model development. The SDM showed ‘excellent’ discrimination for marking-site occurrence, with distance to water, evening hillshade, and distance to pastures identified as the most influential predictors. Independent validation demonstrated ‘acceptable’ discrimination and reliably detected both marking sites and overall Andean bear presence. The independent validation further revealed that bears scent-marked and foraged more frequently in areas without human use. These findings indicate that levels of human activity can influence Andean bear scent-marking and foraging, underscoring the importance of integrating human-bear interactions into conservation planning and tourism management. By identifying areas where essential bear behaviours and human activities overlap, our results highlight opportunities to support long-term coexistence between people and Andean bears in shared landscapes.