| Summary: | Many ecosystems contain sympatric predator species that hunt in different places and times. We tested whether this provides vacant hunting domains, places and times where and when predators are least active, that prey use to minimize threats from multiple predators simultaneously. We measured how northern Yellowstone elk (Cervus elaphus) responded to wolves (Canis lupus) and cougars (Puma concolor), and found that elk selected for areas outside the high‐risk domains of both predators consistent with the vacant domain hypothesis. This enabled elk to avoid one predator without necessarily increasing its exposure to the other. Our results demonstrate how the diel cycle can serve as a key axis of the predator hunting domain that prey exploit to manage predation risk from multiple sources. We argue that a multi‐predator, spatiotemporal framework is vital to understand the causes and consequences of prey spatial response to predation risk in environments with more than one predator. Step-selection function dataset This dataset includes used and available locations for the Step-Selection Function analyses. Additional variables includes topographic roughness (TRI) and vegetation openness (open) as well as wolf (wolf_5hr) and male (male_cat) and female (fem_cat) activity schedules at the corresponding hour of day. Original elk GPS data can be downloaded here: DOI: https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.mr0rg45.2/1.2 SSF_dataset_northern yellowstone elk.csv Activity Schedules This includes the activity schedule by hour for both wolves (wolf_5hr) and male (Male_cat) and female (Fem_cat) cougars. Values were calculated from a generalized additive mixed model. See manuscript for methods. predatoractivityschedules.csv Funding provided by: National Science Foundation Crossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000001 Award Number: DEB–1245373; DEB–0078130
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