DOI: 10.5061/dryad.j0zpc86fb
title: Hare disturbance GPS data

description: Capture and handling of wildlife is an important component of wildlife
 studies, and hunting can be a central tool for wildlife management.
 However, human-caused disturbance of animals can cause various negative
 effects on individuals. Thus, an increased understanding of different
 disturbances on animals will allow improved mitigation of human stressors
 for wildlife, and provides the basis for data‐censoring when using
 information obtained from captured individuals. Here, we investigated the
 effects of capture and handling, as well as experimental disturbance, on
 the movement behavior of GPS-collared European hares (Lepus europaeus). Of
 28 hares captured in box traps, 3 died during handling to fit GPS collars,
 likely due to acute stress. Apart from an 11% decrease in activity in both
 sexes the first 4 days post-capture compared to later, capture events had
 no significant effects on subsequent movement behavior. Hares that were
 disturbed experimentally, i.e. flushed with or without a shotgun shot
 fired, moved on average (± SD) 422 ± 206 m directly subsequent to the
 disturbance, leading to a spatial displacement of their short-term home
 range and an increased daily home range size on the disturbance day. Home
 range sizes returned to their pre-disturbance size on the following days,
 but hares remained further from field edges and spent more time in short
 vegetation in the days after simulated hunting, though this effect was
 comparatively small. Overall, our findings indicate that hares only
 marginally changed their movement behavior in response to short-term
 disturbances. Therefore, capture and hunting disturbance should not have
 severe negative effects on the movement behavior of individuals, but
 future studies should aim to reduce acute capture-related stress to avoid
 mortalities. We recommend that researchers should censor the first 4 days
 post-capture from their analyses to avoid using potentially biased data.
description: We captured 28 hares (10 females and 18 males) in spring and
 summer 2014, 2018 and 2019, using box traps, and collared these hares with
 GPS units. GPSs recorded one-hourly GPS positions throughout the day in
 2014 and 2018, and one position every 15 min in 2019.
 Disturbance experiments were conducted in 2018 and 2019, using 12
 GPS-collared hares, 6 in 2018 and 6 in 2019. We distinguished between 4
 disturbance types (Table 1): (1) ‘control’, which we arbitrarily assigned
 to days without any known disturbance, (2) ‘data download’, in which one
 or two observers downloaded GPS data from the hares’ GPS collar using a
 UHF beacon. (3) ‘Flushed without shot’: two observers approached a hare
 using the UHF beacon of the GPS collar, homing in on the hare until it
 fled. (4) ‘Flushed and shot fired’: two observers approached a hare using
 the UHF beacon, homing in on the hare and fired a shotgun shot in the air
 when the hare escaped, simulating a hunting situation.
description: The data 'Hare_capture_effects_data' shows the
 identifier of each hare ('hare'), the date and local time, the
 latitude and longitude, day of the year (DOY), sex, the number of days
 after capture, distance moved between consecutive GPS positions
 ('dist_moved'), and the distance of each GPS poisition from the
 closest field edge ('dist_to_field_edge').
 The data 'Hare_disturbance_experiment_data' shows the
 same columns as described above, but addtionally shows the distubance
 experiment ID ('Exp_ID'), the fix rate, the period (pre,
 experiment day, post), the time when the hare was disturbed
 ('time_disturbed') and whether the hare fled ('fled'),
 the disturbance type ('Distrurbance'), and the vegetation height
 ('Veg_height'). Both files show raw GPS
 data.