cometadata/datacite-titles-descriptions-related-identifiers huggingface dataset:
DOI: 10.5441/001/1.910p0c20
title: Data from: A novel approach to quantifying the spatiotemporal behavior of instrumented grey seals used to sample the environment

description: Background: Paired with satellite location telemetry, animal-borne instruments can collect spatiotemporal data describing the animal’s movement and environment at a scale relevant to its behavior. Ecologists have developed methods for identifying the area(s) used by an animal (e.g., home range) and those used most intensely (utilization distribution) based on location data. However, few have extended these models beyond their traditional roles as descriptive 2D summaries of point data. Here we demonstrate how the home range method, T-LoCoH, can be expanded to quantify collective sampling coverage by multiple instrumented animals using grey seals (Halichoerus grypus) equipped with GPS tags and acoustic transceivers on the Scotian Shelf (Atlantic Canada) as a case study. At the individual level, we illustrate how time and space-use metrics quantifying individual sampling coverage may be used to determine the rate of acoustic transmissions received. Results: Grey seals collectively sampled an area of 11,308 km 2 and intensely sampled an area of 31 km 2 from June-December. The largest area sampled was in July (2094.56 km 2 ) and the smallest area sampled occurred in August (1259.80 km 2 ), with changes in sampling coverage observed through time. Conclusions: T-LoCoH provides an effective means to quantify changes in collective sampling effort by multiple instrumented animals and to compare these changes across time. We also illustrate how time and space-use metrics of individual instrumented seal movement calculated using T-LoCoH can be used to account for differences in the amount of time a bioprobe (biological sampling platform) spends in an area.
DOI: 10.5441/001/1.kk38017f
title: Data from: A periodic Markov model to formalise animal migration on a network [white-fronted goose data]

description: NOTE: A portion of these same individuals and data are also published with doi 10.5441/001/1.31c2v92f. Regular, long-distance migrations of thousands of animal species have consequences for the ecosystems that they visit, modifying trophic interactions and transporting many non-pathogenic and pathogenic organisms. The spatial structure and dynamic properties of animal migrations and population flyways largely determine those trophic and transport effects, but are yet poorly studied. As a basis, we propose a periodic Markov model on the spatial migration network of breeding, stopover and wintering sites to formally describe the process of animal migration on the population level. From seasonally changing transition rates we derived stable, seasonal densities of animals at the network nodes. We parametrized the model with high-quality GPS and satellite telemetry tracks of white storks (Ciconia ciconia) and greater white-fronted geese (Anser a. albifrons). Topological and network flow properties of the two derived networks conform to migration properties like seasonally changing connectivity and shared, directed movement. Thus, the model realistically describes the migration movement of complete populations and can become an important tool to study the effects of climate and habitat change and pathogen spread on migratory animals. Furthermore, the property of periodically changing transition rates makes it a new type of complex model and we need to understand its dynamic properties.
DOI: 10.5441/001/1.c745vb70
title: Data from: Migratory connectivity at high latitudes: Sabine’s gulls (Xema sabini) from a colony in the Canadian High Arctic migrate to different oceans

description: The world's Arctic latitudes are some of the most recently colonized by birds, and an understanding of the migratory connectivity of circumpolar species offers insights into the mechanisms of range expansion and speciation. Migratory divides exist for many birds, however for many taxa it is unclear where such boundaries lie, and to what extent these affect the connectivity of species breeding across their ranges. Sabine’s gulls (Xema sabini) have a patchy, circumpolar breeding distribution and overwinter in two ecologically similar areas in different ocean basins: the Humboldt Current off the coast of Peru in the Pacific, and the Benguela Current off the coasts of South Africa and Namibia in the Atlantic. We used geolocators to track Sabine’s gulls breeding at a colony in the Canadian High Arctic to determine their migratory pathways and wintering sites. Our study provides evidence that birds from this breeding site disperse to both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans during the non-breeding season, which suggests that a migratory divide for this species exists in the Nearctic. Remarkably, members of one mated pair wintered in opposite oceans. Our results ultimately suggest that colonization of favorable breeding habitat may be one of the strongest drivers of range expansion in the High Arctic.
DOI: 10.5441/001/1.c45f2p05
title: Data from: Pastoralist refugee crisis tests the resilience of open property regime in the Logone Floodplain, Cameroon

description: Previous studies have shown that the open property regime of mobile pastoralists in the Logone Floodplain, Cameroon works as a complex adaptive system in which individual movement decisions result in an ideal free distribution of grazing pressure over common-pool grazing resources. Recently, the humanitarian crisis in the Chad Basin caused by Boko Haram has resulted in the arrival of thousands of pastoralist refugees from Northeastern Nigeria in the Far North Region of Cameroon. In this paper, we examine the impact of pastoralist refugees on the resilience of the open property regime. First, we describe the migratory flight of pastoralists. Second, we examine whether and how the pastoralist refugee crisis affected the open property regime, in particular the distribution of pastoralists over grazing resources. Data were collected in a longitudinal and inter- disciplinary study that integrated spatial and ethnographic approaches to describe and explain the distribution of pastoralists in the Logone Floodplain from 2008 to 2016. The results show that the number of pastoralist refugees from Nigeria exceeds 1000 households with an estimated 100,000 cattle. However, despite the large number of pastoralist refugees, we continue to find evidence of an ideal free distribution of pastoralists over grazing resources in the Logone Floodplain. Moreover, we found that pastoralists, while frustrated by the increasing grazing pressure, remained committed to the ethos of open access. The study offers evidence of the resilience of the open property regime and we discuss the reasons for the resilience of this complex adaptive system using the concept of panarchy.
DOI: 10.5441/001/1.7nv75953
title: Data from: Two subspecies of a songbird migrant optimise departure from a coastal stopover with regard to weather and the route lying ahead

description: Songbirds on migration spend a greater share of their travelling time at stopover sites in order to rest, recover and refuel compared to actively flying. In the German Bight of the North Sea, two subspecies of the northern wheatear split travelling routes, with Greenlandic/Icelandic breeders (subspecies leucorhoa) facing a long over-sea flight and Scandinavian breeding birds (subspecies oenanthe) travelling further roughly along the coast. We used automated radio-telemetry in spring to show that leucorhoa birds stayed significantly longer at a coastal stopover site and clearly selected for favourable weather, especially easterly winds, when resuming flights Conditions for departures of individuals from the subspecies oenanthe were less obvious. They were more likely to depart on nights with southerly winds, often along with rising air temperatures, while air pressure dropped. Individuals of subspecies leucorhoa thus wait for optimal flying conditions to resume for longer flights, while oenanthe birds, with shorter distances ahead, seem to optimise time by leaving the stopover site more quickly. Our dataset thus confirms that songbirds optimise stopover based on their (sub)species-specific migration patterns.
DOI: 10.5441/001/1.4rr97k10
title: Data from: Spatial ecology of the water opossum Chironectes minimus in Atlantic Forest streams

description: The water opossum Chironectes minimus is the world’s only semi-aquatic marsupial. It is considered rare, and it is reported on several regional conservation lists of species as either endangered or data deficient. Given its uniqueness and the poor knowledge of its ecology, we aimed to investigate home range size and overlap and habitat selection of the water opossum in Atlantic Forest streams in southeastern Brazil. We radio tracked water opossums and collected information about their habitats and behaviour from October 2004 to April 2010. We combined common home range estimators for animals living in linear habitats with the synoptic model of home range and habitat selection. For the 10 individuals monitored, the home ranges varied between 0.80 and 9.66 km of watercourses; none of them had exclusive home ranges. The home range size for males was, on average, three times larger than for females. The overlap data showed that, on average, one male could encompass the home ranges of up to five females simultaneously, but more than one male could have access to the same female. For habitat selection at the individual level, we could not find any strong influence of habitat features on water opossum preferences because individuals selected different sets of habitat variables. However, at the population level, we found a negative relationship between home range size and river size. The water opossum seems to prefer shallow and narrow watercourses to establish its home ranges. Here, we present valuable information to advance our knowledge of the water opossum and its ecology, which is urgent for conservation purposes.
DOI: 10.5441/001/1.61896g63
title: Data from: Simulating the transmission of foot-and-mouth disease among mobile herds in the Far North Region, Cameroon

description: NOTE: An updated and larger version of this dataset is available. See doi:10.5441/001/1.pk5ps1r3. Animal and human movements can impact the transmission of infectious diseases. Modeling such impacts presents a significant challenge to disease transmission models because these models often assume a fully mixing population where individuals have an equal chance to contact each other. Whereas movements result in populations that can be best represented as a dynamic networks whose structure changes over time as individual movements result in changing distances between individuals within a population. We model the impact of the movements of mobile pastoralists on foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) transmission in a transhumance system in the Far North Region of Cameroon. The pastoralists in our study area move their livestock between rainy and dry season pastures. We first analyzed transhumance data to derive mobility rules that can be used to simulate the movements of the agents in our model. We developed an agent-based model coupled with a susceptible–infected–recovered (SIR) model. Each agent represents a camp of mobile pastoralists with multiple herds and households. The simulation results demonstrated that the herd mobility significantly influenced the dynamics of FMD. When the grazing area is not explicitly considered (by setting the buffer size to 100 km), all the model simulations suggested the same curves as the results using a fully mixing population. Simulations that used grazing areas observed in the field (≤5 km radius) resulted in multiple epidemic peaks in a year, which is similar to the empirical evidence that we obtained by surveying herders from our study area over the last four years.
DOI: 10.5441/001/1.03ck4s52
title: Data from: Study "Lowland tapirs, Tapirus terrestris, in Southern Brazil"

description: Background: Animal movement is a key ecological process that is tightly coupled to local environmental conditions. While agriculture, urbanisation, and transportation infrastructure are critical to human socio-economic improvement, these have spurred substantial changes in animal movement across the globe with potential impacts on fitness and survival. Notably, however, human disturbance can have differential effects across species, and responses to human activities are thus largely taxa and context specific. As human disturbance is only expected to worsen over the next decade it is critical to better understand how species respond to human disturbance in order to develop effective, case-specific conservation strategies. Methods: Here, we use an extensive telemetry dataset collected over 22 years to fill a critical knowledge gap in the movement ecology of lowland tapirs (Tapirus terrestris) across areas of varying human disturbance within three biomes in southern Brazil: the Pantanal, Cerrado, and Atlantic Forest. Results: From these data we found that the mean home range size across all monitored tapirs was 8.31 km2 (95% CI 6.53–10.42), with no evidence that home range sizes differed between sexes nor age groups. Interestingly, although the Atlantic Forest, Cerrado, and Pantanal vary substantially in habitat composition, levels of human disturbance, and tapir population densities, we found that lowland tapir movement behaviour and space use were consistent across all three biomes. Human disturbance also had no detectable effect on lowland tapir movement. Lowland tapirs living in the most altered habitats we monitored exhibited movement behaviour that was comparable to that of tapirs living in a near pristine environment. Conclusions: Contrary to our expectations, although we observed individual variability in lowland tapir space use and movement, human impacts on the landscape also had no measurable effect on their movement. Lowland tapir movement behaviour thus appears to exhibit very little phenotypic plasticity in response to human disturbance. Crucially, the lack of any detectable response to anthropogenic disturbance suggests that human modified habitats risk being ecological traps for tapirs and this information should be factored into conservation actions and species management aimed towards protecting lowland tapir populations.
DOI: 10.5441/001/1.33159h1h
title: Data from: Temporal and contextual consistency of leadership in homing pigeon flocks

description: Organized flight of homing pigeons (Columba livia) was previously shown to rely on simple leadership rules between flock mates, yet the stability of this social structuring over time and across different contexts remains unclear. We quantified the repeatability of leadership-based flock structures within a flight and across multiple flights conducted with the same animals. We compared two contexts of flock composition: flocks of birds of the same age and flight experience; and, flocks of birds of different ages and flight experience. All flocks displayed consistent leadership-based structures over time, showing that individuals have stable roles in the navigational decisions of the flock. However, flocks of balanced age and flight experience exhibited reduced leadership stability, indicating that these factors promote flock structuring. Our study empirically demonstrates that leadership and followership are consistent behaviours in homing pigeon flocks, but such consistency is affected by the heterogeneity of individual flight experiences and/or age. Similar evidence from other species suggests leadership as an important mechanism for coordinated motion in small groups of animals with strong social bonds.
DOI: 10.5441/001/1.27244v55
title: Data from: Study "Herring Gulls (Larus Argentatus); Fifield; Witless Bay, Canada"

description: Background: Recent studies have proposed that birds migrating short distances migrate at an overall slower pace, minimizing energy expenditure, while birds migrating long distances minimize time spent on migration to cope with seasonal changes in environmental conditions. Methods: We evaluated variability in the migration strategies of Herring Gulls (Larus argentatus), a generalist species with flexible foraging and flight behaviour. We tracked one population of long distance migrants and three populations of short distance migrants, and compared the directness of their migration routes, their overall migration speed, their travel speed, and their use of stopovers. Results: Our research revealed that Herring Gulls breeding in the eastern Arctic migrate long distances to spend the winter in the Gulf of Mexico, traveling more than four times farther than gulls from Atlantic Canada during autumn migration. While all populations used indirect routes, the long distance migrants were the least direct. We found that regardless of the distance the population traveled, Herring Gulls migrated at a slower overall migration speed than predicted by Optimal Migration Theory, but the long distance migrants had higher speeds on travel days. While long distance migrants used more stopover days overall, relative to the distance travelled all four populations used a similar number of stopover days. Conclusions: When taken in context with other studies, we expect that the migration strategies of flexible generalist species like Herring Gulls may be more influenced by habitat and food resources than migration distance.
DOI: 10.5441/001/1.44183438
title: Data from: Long-distance seed dispersal by straw-coloured fruit bats varies by season and landscape

description: NOTE: An updated and larger version of this dataset is available. See https://doi.org/10.5441/001/1.k8n02jn8. ABSTRACT: On-going fragmentation of tropical forest ecosystems and associated depletion of seed dispersers threatens the long-term survival of animal-dispersed plants. These threats do not only affect biodiversity and species abundance, but ultimately ecosystem functions and services. Thus, seed dispersers such as the straw-coloured fruit bat, E. helvum, which traverse long distances across fragmented landscapes, are particularly important for maintaining genetic connectivity and colonizing new sites for plant species. Using high-resolution GPS-tracking of movements, field observations and gut retention experiments, we quantify dispersal distances for small- and large-seeded fruits foraged by E. helvum during periods of colony population low (wet season) and high (dry season) in an urban and a rural landscape in the forest zone of Ghana. Gut passage time averaged 116 min (range 4–1143 min), comparable to other fruit bats. Movements were generally longer in the urban than in the rural landscape and also longer in the dry than in the wet season. As the majority of seeds are dispersed only to feeding roosts, median dispersal distances were similar for both large (42–67 m) and small (42–65 m) seeds. However, small seeds were potentially dispersed up to 75.4 km, four times further than the previous maximum distance estimated for a similar-sized frugivore. Maximum seed dispersal distances for small seeds were almost twice as long in the rural (49.7 km) compare to the urban (31.2 km) landscape. Within the urban landscape, estimated maximum dispersal distances for small seeds were three times longer during the dry season (75.4 km) compared to the wet season (22.8 km); in contrast, distances in the rural landscape were three times longer in the wet season (67 km) compared to the dry season (24.4). Dispersal distances for large seeds during the dry season (551 m) in the rural landscape were almost twice that in the wet season (319 m). We found no influence of food phenology on dispersal distances. The maximum likelihood for seed dispersal beyond feeding roosts (mean distance from food tree 263 m) was 4.7%. Small seeds were dispersed over even longer distances, &gt;500 and &gt;1000 m, with a likelihood of 3.0 % and 2.3 % respectively. Our data show that E. helvum retains ingested seeds for very long periods and may traverse large distances, probably making it an important long distance seed disperser in tropical Africa. We suggest E. helvumis important for ecosystem functioning and urge its conservation.
DOI: 10.5441/001/1.f32gn841
title: Data from: The effect of feeding time on dispersal of Virola seeds by toucans determined from GPS tracking and accelerometers

description: Seed dispersal is critical to understanding forest dynamics but is hard to study because tracking seeds is difficult. Even for the best-studied dispersal system of the Neotropics, Virola nobilis, the dispersal kernel remains unknown. We combined high-resolution GPS/3D-acceleration bird tracking, seed-retention experiments, and field observations to quantify dispersal of V. nobilis by their principal dispersers, Ramphastos toucans. We inferred feeding events from movement data, and then estimated spatiotemporally explicit seed-dispersal kernels. Wild toucans moved an average of 1.8 km d^-1 with two distinct activity peaks. Seed retention time in captive toucans averaged 25.5 min (range 4-98 min). Estimated seed dispersal distance averaged 144 +/- 147 m, with a 56% likelihood of dispersal &gt;100 m, two times further than the behaviour-naive estimate from the same data. Dispersal was furthest for seeds ingested in the morning, and increased with seed retention time, but only up to 60 min after feeding. Our study supports the long-standing hypothesis that toucans are excellent dispersers of Virola seeds. To maximize seed dispersal distances trees should ripen fruit in the morning when birds move the most, and produce fruits with gut-processing times around 60 min. Our study demonstrates how new tracking technology can yield nuanced seed dispersal kernels for animals that cannot be directly observed.
DOI: 10.5441/001/1.307
title: Data from: Winter GPS tagging reveals home ranges during the breeding season for a boreal-nesting migrant songbird, the Golden-crowned Sparrow

description: Determining space use for species is fundamental to understanding their ecology, and tracking animals can reveal insights into their spatial ecology on home ranges and territories. Recent technological advances have led to GPS-tracking devices light enough for birds as small as ~30 g, creating novel opportunities to remotely monitor fine-scale movements and space use for these smaller species. We tested whether miniaturized GPS tags can allow us to understand space use of migratory birds away from their capture sites and sought to understand both pre-breeding space use as well as territory and habitat use on the breeding grounds. We used GPS tags to characterize home ranges on the breeding grounds for a migratory songbird with limited available breeding information, the Golden-crowned Sparrow (Zonotrichia atricapilla). Using GPS points from 23 individuals across 26 tags (three birds tagged twice), we found home ranges in Alaska and British Columbia were on average 44.1 ha (95% kernel density estimate). In addition, estimates of territory sizes based on field observations (mean 2.1 ha, 95% minimum convex polygon [MCP]) were three times smaller than 95% MCPs created using GPS tags (mean 6.5 ha). Home ranges included a variety of land cover classes, with shrubland particularly dominant (64–100% of home range cover for all but one bird). Three birds tracked twice returned to the same breeding area each year, supporting high breeding site fidelity for this species. We found reverse spring migration for five birds that flew up to 154 km past breeding destinations before returning. GPS-tracking technology allowed for critical ecological insights into this migratory species that breeds in very remote locations.