DOI: 10.5061/dryad.x0k6djhxj
title: Returning neighbors: Eastern wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo silvestris) occupancy in an urban landscape

description: Once extirpated from most of its range due to overharvest and habitat loss
 in the early 1900s, the eastern wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo
 silvestris) has been recolonizing landscapes in the eastern United States
 due to restoration and reintroduction efforts. Wild turkey populations
 have rebounded in the last 50 years so much so that wild turkey is seen as
 one of the most successful conservation efforts in the US. More recently,
 wild turkeys have begun to expand into cities across the US. While this
 can be seen as a successful return of a once extirpated species, it has
 also given rise to human-wildlife conflict in highly populated areas.
 Given the ecological differences between urban and rural ecosystems, it is
 important for conservation and management efforts to understand how wild
 turkey use urban landscapes. We used cameras deployed at 75 long-term
 study sites across the Washington, D.C. region to assess occupancy and
 habitat use of urban wild turkey at multiple scales. We found that wild
 turkey occupancy was positively correlated with the distance to roadways
 and the proportion of natural vegetation cover within 1 km, while
 occupancy was negatively correlated with the distance to the nearest water
 source and mean canopy height within 4 km. Our findings add to the
 understanding of how wild turkeys are returning and using novel urban
 ecosystems and can inform future management needs, contribute to
 conservation initiatives, and help reduce negative human-wildlife
 interactions.
description: # R script, JAGS models, and data used to fit an autologistic occupancy
 model for wild turkey in Washington, D.C. USA # Returning Neighbors:
 Eastern Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo silvestris) Occupancy in an Urban
 Landscape ## **Authors** Merri Collins, Katherine Edwards, Scott Bates,
 and Travis Gallo ## **File Descriptions** ### **Scripts:**
 **Scripts/TurkeyMultiOccu_package_load.R** - run this script to download
 and load all scripts needed in this analysis
 **Scripts/2025-07-21_landscape_variables.R** - this script will calculate
 and scale all covariates used in the autologistic occupancy model.
 **Note**: there are many publically GIS layers needed in this analysis. We
 have not included these data, but have included relevant urls (active at
 the creation of this repository) within this script.
 **Scripts/2025-07-21_fit_JAGS.R** - this script will format turkey
 observations into detection histories, calculate an observation covariate,
 fit and run diagnostics on the autologistic occupancy JAGS model.
 **Scripts/2025-07-21_summarize_plot.R** - creates Figure 2
 **Scripts/2025-07-21_summarize_results.R** - calculates summary statistics
 of observation data and odds ratios, variable inclusion probabilities, and
 Tables 2 and 3 from model results.
 **Scripts/2025-07-21_lasso_model_jags.R** - JAGS model script for
 multi-season autologistic occupancy model
 **Scripts/2025-07-21_reduced_lasso_model_jags.R** - JAGS model script for
 multi-season autologistic occupancy model using only the 11 variables that
 remained after the variable selection procedure ### **Directories and Data
 Files:** **Data/TurkeyOccupancyReport.csv** - Detection data of wild
 turkey in Washington, D.C. This data is read into
 `Scripts/2025-07-21_landscape_variables.R` and
 `Scripts/2025-07-21_fit_JAGS.R`. This data has 51 columns | Column header
 | Data type | Description | 
 
 | | -------------- | --------- |
 ----------------------------------------------- | :----- | | Species |
 character | The name of the species | 
 
 | | Season | character | The season for which observation was collected |
 
 
 | | Site | character | The name of the camera location | 
 
 | | Latitude | numeric | Latitude coordinates (WGS84) | 
 
 | | Longitude | numeric | Longitude coordinates (WGS84) | 
 
 | | Day\_1-Day\_45 | numeric | Detection (1 detected or 0 not detected) |
 
 
 | **GIS/** - empty directory to save GIS layers. To line up with the
 current working directory, this folder must exist and GIS layers must be
 saved in this directory. See scripts for sub-directory labels.
 **Results/** - empty directory to save results and figure to **Note:** All
 of these files must be within your working directory for the analysis to
 work. Analyses were done in parallel. Therefore, you will need to adjust
 the settings accordingly.