DOI: 10.5061/dryad.cz8w9gj6c
title: Literature review on the effect of conspecific density on animal dispersal (2000-2023)

description: We review empirical studies of animal dispersal in relation to conspecific
 density to examine the evidence for density-dependent dispersal among taxa
 and test whether reports of its occurrence are taxon-specific and/or
 biased by the methodology employed. We conducted a thorough review of the
 literature (2000 - 2023) and found k = 97 empirical studies of amphibians,
 birds, fishes, invertebrates, mammals, or reptiles that had tested for a
 correlation between conspecific density and animal dispersal. From each,
 we derived the correlation coefficient of the relationship between density
 and dispersal, which we z-transformed to obtain the effect size,
 Zr. We also extracted and compiled information on
 taxonomic group, sex, age, migratory behavior, experimental setup,
 dispersal metric, density metric, and variable type, as well as temporal
 and spatial scale to test their relationships with Zr using linear
 regressions and multilevel mixed-effect modeling.
description: # Literature review on the effect of conspecific density on animal
 dispersal (2000-2023)
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.cz8w9gj6c](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.cz8w9gj6c) ## Description of the data and file structure This data was extracted from studies included in the systematic review on density-dependent dispersal by Jreidini and Green (2024) in Movement Ecology. For information on this study, contact primary author Nathalie Jreidini: [nathalie.jreidini@gmail.com](mailto:nathalie.jreidini@gmail.com).  All data extracted from studies included in the meta-analysis were either obtained from the corresponding manuscript or the open-access dataset linked to the study. For information on individual studies included in the review, the short-hand citations are found in the CSV file and the list of citations can be found in Appendix 1 of the manuscript. Variables included in the dataset and their explanation: * Citation: short-hand citation of the article/study * Year: Year of publication * Species: scientific name of the species under study * migratory behaviour: whether the animal performs migratory movements as part of its life history or not * manipulated study design: whether the experimental setup was manipulated (‘yes’) or natural (‘no’) * density parameter: the level at which density was measured (or the metric) * density variable: whether density was measured over a continuous or discrete time scale * spatial scale: whether dispersal was measured between patches or within a patch * temporal scale: whether dispersal was measured between years, within a year, or per trial (for lab studies) * Age: age of study species, either Juvenile (not yet sexually mature) or Adult * Sex: whether the study included male (M) female (F) or both (M+F) sexes * Sex-bias: whether the study reported a sex bias or not (yes/no) * Age-bias: whether the study reported an age bias or not (yes/no) * DD effect: the density-dependence effect reported by the study, either positive negative, or no effect * n: study sample size * r: treatment effect (Pearson’s r for the effect of density on dispersal) * Zr: Z-transformed effect Pearson’s r * SE: standard error of treatment effect