DOI: 10.5061/dryad.pzgmsbcws
title: Data from: Spatial–social familiarity complements the spatial–social interface: evidence from Yellowstone bison

description: This dataset can be used to reproduce the results from Merkle et al. 2024,
 Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. The abstract of that
 study is as follows. Social animals make behavioural decisions based on
 local habitat and conspecifics, as well as memoriszed past experience
 (i.e., ‘familiarity’) with habitat and conspecifics. Here, we develop a
 conceptual and empirical understanding of how spatial and social
 familiarity fit within the spatial-–social interface – —a novel framework
 integrating the spatial and social components of animal behaviour. We
 conducted a multi-scale analysis of the movements of GPS-collared plains
 bison (Bison bison, n = 66) residing in and around Yellowstone National
 Park, USA. We found that both spatial and social familiarity mediate how
 individuals respond to their spatial and social environments. For
 instance, individuals with high spatial familiarity rely on their own
 knowledge as opposed to their conspecifics’, and individuals with high
 social familiarity rely more strongly on the movement of conspecifics to
 guide their own movement. We also found that fine-scale spatial and social
 phenotypes often scale up to broad-scale phenotypes. For instance, bison
 that select more strongly to align with their nearest neighbour have
 larger home ranges. By integrating spatial and social familiarity into the
 spatial-–social interface, we demonstrate the utility of the interface for
 testing hypotheses, while also highlighting the pervasive importance of
 cognitive mechanisms in animal behaviour.
description: This dataset is derived from GPS collar data from 66 adult female
 bison in Yellowstone National Park (2009-2020) and herbaceous biomass and
 tree cover information from the Rangeland Analysis Platform. Details of
 the analyses can be found in Merkle et al. 2024, Philosophical
 Transactions of the Royal Society B.
description: # Data for Spatial-–social familiarity complements the spatial-–social
 interface: evidence from Yellowstone bison
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.pzgmsbcws](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.pzgmsbcws) This dataset can be used to reproduce the results from Merkle et al. 2024, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. This dataset is derived from GPS collar data from 66 adult female bison in Yellowstone National Park (2009-2020) and herbaceous biomass and tree cover information from the Rangeland Analysis Platform. Details of the analyses can be found in Merkle et al. 2024, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. In summary, these data can be used to reproduce the Step Selection Analysis, and the analysis of within and between fine- and broad-scale spatial and social phenotypes.   ## Description of the data and file structure There are two csv files here. The first can be used to reproduce the Step Selection Analysis, and each row is a step. The second can be used to reproduce the analysis of within and between fine- and broad-scale spatial and social phenotypes, and each row is a phenotype for an individual bison in a given year and season. The SSF dataset can be used to carry out the analyses in the code file "*step05SSFfit.R*" from the supplementary material in Merkle et al. 2024, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, and the phenotype analysis dataset can be used to carry out the analyses in the code file "*step09_AnalyzePhenotypes.R*". In the SSF dataset, column names and their descriptions are as follows: * year: year the animal was collared and step was taken * id: bison research identification number of the step * id_yr_seas: indicator variable of animal identification number, year of collaring, and season of collaring of the step * year_bio: biological year of collaring and synthesis where a new biological year starts December of the previous year. * year_seas: biological year, and season * case: indicator variable whether a step was used (denoted as 1) or available (denoted as 0) within a given strata * strata: indicator variable denoting a used step and its associated available steps * dist.log: log of the distance (in meters) between the start and end point of the step * Biomass_ForbsGrasses.target: Biomass of annual and perennial forbs and biomasses at the end of the step. Derived from Rangeland Analysis Platform. Units are pounds per acre. * Cover_Trees.target: Percent tree cover at the end of the step. Derived from Rangeland Analysis Platform. Units are percentage. * align.closest.id: Degree to which the direction of their used and available steps were aligned with the movement direction of their nearest collared conspecific at the same time step. Unitless. * time.near.target.1yr.log: Absolute knowledge of a given area by calculating the log of the number of observed GPS locations of the focal individual that fell within 410 m of the endpoint of the step within the previous 365 days of monitoring.  * time.near.target.1yr.relative: Relative knowledge of a given area, calculated as the log of the number of observed GPS locations of the nearest conspecific individual that fell within 410 m of the endpoint of the step within the previous 365 days of monitoring, subtracted by time.near.target.1yr.log.  * days.since.visit.source.relative: The the number of days it has been since the focal animal spent any time within 410 m of the source location subtracted by the number of days it has been since the nearest conspecific spent any time within 410 m of the source location. Here larger values represent less familiarity with the area compared to the nearest conspecific, whereas smaller values represent more familiarity. * prev.steps.together.mean: Average number of hours in the previous 7 days the pairs of individuals from same group were together. In the Phenotypes Analysis dataset, column names and their descriptions are as follows: * id: bison research identification number of the phenotype * id_yr_seas: indicator variable of animal identification number, year of collaring, and season of collaring of the phenotype * year_bio: biological year of the phenotype where a new biological year starts December of the previous year. * Variable: name of the phenotype from the step selection analysis. * coef: phenotype value (i.e., coefficient) from the step selection analysis. * numb_collared: number of animals collared at the time that the phenotype was calculated * season2: season of the phenotype * Area95: Home range size in square meters. * PropGraze: Proportion of time spent in high use grazing areas * strength: strength estimated from social network analyses * degree: degree estimated from social network analyses ## Sharing/Access information Data was derived from the following sources: * GPS collar data from 66 adult female bison in Yellowstone National Park (2009-2020). * Herbaceous biomass and tree cover information from the Rangeland Analysis Platform ([https://rangelands.app/](https://rangelands.app/)). ## Code/Software All the code used to conduct our analyses can be found in the supplementary material in Merkle et al. 2024, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.