DOI: 10.5061/dryad.ht76hdrt7
title: Data from: Den attendance by Arctic foxes experiencing 10 years of increasing tourism

description: Wildlife tourism is a growing industry, and an increasing number of people
 seek to observe and interact with wild animals in their natural
 surroundings. In Iceland, the native Arctic fox (Vulpes lagopus) is
 widespread and has been under heavy hunting pressure for centuries.
 However, in Hornstrandir nature reserve (66° 44'N, 22° 42'W),
 foxes have been protected from hunting since 1994. These foxes are
 relatively tame and have become popular amongst tourists who want to
 observe and take close-up photos of young cubs. Breeding foxes, therefore,
 face increasing human disturbance within their active den area. In this
 study, parental visits to fox dens and tourist activities in the area were
 monitored in 2008 and then annually for a ten-year period (2010-2019). The
 data demonstrated an increase in tourism near fox dens, and a decrease in
 the frequency with which fox parents visit the den. The results further
 suggest that foxes visited the den less often when tourists were present
 (reducing from 0.23 visits per hour by females in the peak time of day
 without tourists, to 0.18 visits per hour with tourists present). This
 study gives support to our hypothesis that tourist activity disturbs the
 frequency of parental visits to their offspring, but at current levels of
 tourism, this may not be affecting the frequency of parental feeding.
description: # Den attendance by Arctic foxes experiencing 10 years of increasing
 tourism Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.ht76hdrt7](10.5061/dryad.ht76hdrt7) ##
 Description of the data and file structure There are two CSV files. Both
 can be loaded into R foxData &lt;-
 read.csv("den_attendance_by_arctic_foxes_experiencing_increasing_tourism_foxData.csv", ``` stringsAsFactors=TRUE) ``` foxDataMF &lt;- read.csv("den_attendance_by_arctic_foxes_experiencing_increasing_tourism_foxDataMF.csv", ``` stringsAsFactors=TRUE) ``` * foxData has one row per observation of a fox den for a 4 hour duration (or shorter). **Variables in foxData** \- year : numeric, year \- yearSince2008 : numeric, year rescaled so 2008 becomes year 0 \- denID : character, identifier for den \- observationDay : numeric, day on which observation took place (1-5 within the observed period) \- timePeriodOfDay : character, time of day (period1 is 10:00 to 14:00, 2 is 14:00 to 18:00, 3 is 18:00 to 22:00) \- observationDurationMins : numeric, duration of observation (up to 240 minutes) \- logObservationTime : numeric, log of above \- foggy : logical, TRUE if observation affected by fog \- countVisitsMale : numeric, count of visits by male parent fox \- countFeedingMale : numeric, count of visits by male parent fox with food \- countVisitsFemale : numeric, as above female \- countFeedingFemale : numeric, as above female \- countNursing : numeric, count of visits by female parent fox to nurse cubs \- countTourists : numeric, count of unique individual tourists in the area near den \- touristDurationMins : numeric, duration of time within the period at least one tourist was present \- countTouristArrivalEvents : numeric, count of events at which one or more tourist arrived in area (also add 1 if tourists present at start of observation period) * foxDataMF is one row for each parent, per observation of a fox den (twice as many rows as foxData) Most variables as above. **Variables in foxDataMF** \- year \- yearSince2008 \- denID \- observationDay \- timePeriodOfDay \- observationDurationMins \- logObservationTime \- foggy \- sex : character, sex of the parent that this row refers to \- countVisits : numeric, count of visits by this parent fox \- countFeeding : numeric, count of visits by this parent fox with food \- countTourists \- touristDurationMins \- countTouristArrivalEvents ## Code/software Supplemental data and full R codes with packages are in the Supplemental information file which is accessible in open access with the paper Data is on CSV format, readable into R and Excel or other spreadsheet formats **Libraries in R** **library**(dplyr) *# data preparation* **library**(glmmTMB) *# model fitting with glmmTMB()* **library**(DHARMa) *# tests of over-dispersal and zero-inflation* **library**(car) *# Anova()* **library**(emmeans) *# to compare parameter confidence intervals* **library**(ggplot2) *# figures*