DOI: 10.5061/dryad.sn02v6x8c
title: Using global remote camera data of a “solitary” species complex to evaluate the drivers of group formation

description: The social system of animals involves a complex interplay between
 physiology, natural history, and the environment. Long relied upon
 discrete categorizations of “social” and “solitary” inhibit our capacity
 to understand species, and their interactions with the world around them.
 Here, we use a globally distributed camera trapping dataset to test the
 drivers of aggregating into groups in a species complex (martens and
 relatives, family Mustelidae, Order Carnivora) assumed to be obligately
 solitary. We use a simple quantification, the probability of being
 detected in a group, that was applied across our globally derived camera
 trap dataset. Using a series of binomial generalized mixed-effects models
 applied to a dataset of 16,483 independent detections across 17 countries
 on four continents we test explicit hypotheses about potential drivers of
 group formation. We observe a wide range of probabilities of being
 detected in groups within the “solitary” model system, with the
 probability of aggregating in groups varying by more than an order of
 magnitude. We demonstrate that a species’ proclivity towards aggregating
 in groups is underpinned by a range of resource-related factors, primarily
 the distribution of resources, with increasing patchiness of resources
 facilitating group formation, as well as interactions between
 environmental conditions (resource constancy/winter severity) and
 physiology (energy storage capabilities). Combined these factors explain
 observed variance in context-dependent tendencies towards grouping. The
 wide variation in propensities to aggregate with conspecifics observed
 here highlights how continued failure to recognise complexities in the
 social behaviours of apparently “solitary” species limits our
 understanding not only of the individual species, but also the causes and
 consequences of group formation.
description: We conducted a literature review of camera trap research in
 regions across the globe within the expected ranges of any member of the
 <em>Martes </em>complex during 2000 – 2020. We used search
 terms related to specific species names as well as generic terms such as
 “marten”, “camera trap”, “survey”, and “study”. We used these to create a
 database of correspondence authors from whom we requested data. In
 addition, we contacted experts, and reviewed the activities of major
 international non­‑governmental organizations. We conducted snowball
 sampling, obtaining additional datasets from colleagues recommended by
 previous contacts. Data gathered included longitude and latitude of camera
 stations, date, time, species names, number of individuals in each image,
 and other associated information (e.g. use of bait). Whilst camera
 deployment methods varied across the collated studies (see Appendix S1 for
 full details of each locality), the general method involved deploying
 camera traps either without bait or facing a bait station (bait varied
 with the focal species and included peanuts, eggs, beaver meat, scent
 lures, and so forth). Cameras were set to take photos in bursts of 1-10
 images or videos of 10 seconds – 1 minute with short interval times (1 –
 20s). Camera makes and models can also be found listed in Appendix
 S1.
description: Anything that opens .csv files e.g. R
description: # Using global remote camera data of a “solitary” species complex to
 evaluate the drivers of group formation Joshua P. Twining, Chris
 Sutherland, Andrzej Zalewski, Michael V. Cove, Johnny Birks, Oliver R.
 Wearn, Jessica Haysom, Anna Wereszczuk, Emiliano Manzo, Paola Bartolommei,
 Alessio Mortelliti, Bryn Evans, Brian D. Gerber, Thomas J. McGreevy Jr.,
 Laken S. Ganoe, Juliana Masseloux, Amy E. Mayer, Izabela Wierzbowska, Jan
 Loch, Jocelyn Akins, Donovan Drummey, William McShea, Stephanie Manke,
 Lain Pardo, Andy Boyce, Sheng Li, Roslina Binti Ragai, Ronglarp
 Sukmasuang, Álvaro José Villafañe Trujillo, Carlos Lopez-Gonzlez, Nalleli
 Elvira Lara-Daz, Olivia Cosby, Cristian N. Waggershauser, Jack Bamber,
 Frances Stewart, Jason Fisher, Angela Fuller, Kelly Perkins, Roger A.
 Powell. Author Information A. Principal investigator contact information
 Name: Joshua P. Twining Institution: Cornell University Address: DNRE,
 Cornell University, Fernow Hall, Ithaca, NY, USA, 14850 Email:
 Date of collection: 2020 - 2023 Geographic
 location of data collection: Global Funding sources that supported the
 collection of the data: None Recommended citation for this dataset:
 Twining et al. (2022). Data and code from: Using global remote camera data
 of a “solitary” species complex to evaluate the drivers of group formation
 ## Data and file overview Methodological information: All camera trapping
 data was gathered using a snow-ball literature review method. **1.
 Martes.social.binom.no.dens.latllongprep.fulldata.withmovebankcovs_new.csv** This file contains all the detection event information and related covariate information each in this analysis. Each row is a independent detection, each column is a variable, and each cell is a value. 1. Number of variables: 22 2. Number of rows: 33994 3. Missing data code: N/A 4. Abbreviations used: NA 5. Other: None Table 1. Detailing the columns contained within the data .csv and the description and sources of each value. | Column name | Description | | :-------------------- | :------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Record.ID | Unique identifier for each detection | | Species | The species of marten and relative that was detected | | DateTime | The date and time in DD/MM/YYYY HH:MM format | | Day | The ordinal day of the year | | Year | The calender year | | Time | The time (24 hour format) | | Method | Two level factor: Baited camera = camera trap was baited with either food or scent lure vs. Unbaited camera = no bait or lure was used | | Region | The region the camera trap was located in | | Site | A site name as provided by data contributors | | Lat | The latitude of the camera trap (WGS 84) | | Long | The longitude of the camera trap (WGS 84) | | Habitat | A local habitat description as provided by data contributor | | Climate | A two level factor: Tropical (dry season and wet season) vs. Temperate (spring, summer, autumn, winter) | | Number.of.Individuals | The number of individual animals contained within the image | | Author | The data contributor of the detection | | Group | Binary coding of whether there there was 1 animal in an image (0) or &gt;1 animal in an image (1) | | Mass | The average mass of the species | | Resource | The resource patchiness metric, full description of which and relevant references can be found in associated publication | | Temp\_diff | The annual temperature difference at that site calculated from MODIS Land Surface Temperature estimates (Wan, Hook, and Hulley, 2021) | | GPP | The gross primary productivity of a site calculated from MODIS Land Satellite estimates (Running, Mu, and Zhao, 2021) | | random | A random number generated from a uniform distribution between 0-1 to test for colinearity between covariates. |