DOI: 10.5061/dryad.dk2pm
title: Data from: Socially informed dispersal in a territorial cooperative breeder

description: 1. Dispersal is a key process governing the dynamics of socially and
 spatially structured populations, and involves three distinct stages:
 emigration, transience, and settlement. At each stage, individuals have to
 make movement decisions, which are influenced by social, environmental,
 and individual factors. Yet, a comprehensive understanding of the drivers
 that influence such decisions is still lacking, particularly for the
 transient stage during which free-living individuals are inherently
 difficult to follow. 2. Social circumstances such as the likelihood of
 encountering conspecifics can be expected to strongly affects decision
 making during dispersal, particularly in territorial species where
 encounters with resident conspecifics are antagonistic. Here we analyzed
 the movement trajectories of 47 dispersing coalitions of Kalahari meerkats
 (Suricata suricatta) through a landscape occupied by constantly monitored
 resident groups, while simultaneously taking into account environmental
 and individual characteristics. 3. We used GPS locations collected on
 resident groups to create a geo-referenced social landscape representing
 the likelihood of encountering resident groups. We used a step-selection
 function to infer the effect of social, environmental and individual
 covariates on habitat selection during dispersal. Lastly, we created a
 temporal mismatch between the social landscape and the dispersal event of
 interest to identify the temporal scale at which dispersers perceive the
 social landscape. 4. Including information about the social landscape
 considerably improved our representation of the dispersal trajectory,
 compared to analyses that only accounted for environmental variables. The
 latter were only marginally selected or avoided by dispersers. Before
 leaving their natal territory, dispersers selected areas frequently used
 by their natal group. In contrast, after leaving their natal territory,
 they selectively used areas where they were less likely to encounter
 unrelated groups. This pattern was particularly marked in larger
 dispersing coalitions and when unrelated males were part of the dispersing
 coalition. 5. Our results suggest that, in socially and spatially
 structured species, dispersers gather and process social information
 during dispersal, and that reducing risk of aggression from unrelated
 resident groups outweighs benefits derived from conspecific attraction.
 Finally, our work underlines the intimate link between the social
 structure of a population and dispersal, which affect each other
 reciprocally.
description: Resident groups
 relocation datatxt files contain GPS
 data collected on resident groups during each visit. File name (e.g.
 AX141208amTIA.txt) returns information on: group identity (AX); date of
 data collection (141808); whether the visit was in the morning (am) or
 afternoon; and information on the observer (TIA). Single files contain
 information on: Latitude and longitude (Position); altitude (Altitude);
 time of data collection (Description). SB (under Description) returns the
 location of a sleeping burrow. R codes to merge all files and extract all
 necessary information are available through the corresponding
 author.Res_groups_locations.zipDispersing coalitions relocation dataThe file is a composite of movement data of all dispersing coalitions and sub-coalitions.Dispersers_locations.xlsx