DOI: 10.5061/dryad.vq83bk3qd
title: Data from: Group density, disease, and season shape territory size and overlap of social carnivores

description: 1. The spatial organization of a population can influence the spread of
 information, behaviour, and pathogens. Territory size and territory
 overlap, components of spatial organization, provide key information as
 these metrics may be indicators of habitat quality, resource dispersion,
 contact rates, and environmental risk (e.g., indirectly transmitted
 pathogens). Furthermore, sociality and behaviour can also shape space use,
 and subsequently, how space use and habitat quality together impact
 demography. 2. Our study aims to identify factors shaping the spatial
 organization of wildlife populations and assess the impact of epizootics
 on space use. We also use network analysis to describe spatial
 organization and connectivity of social groups. 3. Here, we assessed the
 seasonal spatial organization of Serengeti lions and Yellowstone wolves at
 the group level. We examine the factors predicting mean territory size and
 mean territory overlap for each population using generalized additive
 models. We further explore the mechanisms by which disease perturbations
 could cause changes in spatial organization. 4. We demonstrate that lions
 and wolves were similar in that group-level factors, such as number of
 groups, shaped spatial organization more than population-level factors,
 such as population density. Factors shaping territory size were slightly
 different than factors shaping territory overlap; for example, wolf pack
 size was an important predictor of territory overlap, but not territory
 size. Lion spatial networks were more highly connected, while wolf spatial
 networks varied seasonally. We found that resource dispersion may be more
 important for driving territory size and overlap for wolves than for
 lions. Additionally, canine distemper epizootics may alter lion spatial
 organization, highlighting the importance of including behavioural and
 movement ecology in studies of pathogen transmission dynamics. 5. We
 provide insight about when we might expect to observe the impacts of
 resource dispersion, disease perturbations, and other ecological factors
 on spatial organization. Our work highlights the importance of monitoring
 and managing social carnivore populations at the group level. Future
 research should elucidate the complex relationships between demographics,
 social and spatial structure, abiotic and biotic conditions, and pathogen
 infections. 
description: Here we provide the R code (as R Markdown documents) used to
 analyze variables predicting group-level territory size and overlap for
 Serengeti lions and Yellowstone wolves. We show the structure of the
 datasets, interpretation of the code, and summaries of the Serengeti lion
 and Yellowstone wolf metadata. We also provide the code for our
 generalized additive models (GAM) and model outputs.
 Specifically,
 'Wolf_Datasets_Markdown.doc' demonstrates how we
 created the final dataset used in our GAMs from the raw locational data
 for Yellowstone wolves. This is where we parse down the data used,
 calculate certain network measures (e.g., degree), and estimate spatial
 measures (e.g., territory size).
 'GAM_Markdown.doc' provides the code for our
 machine-learning imputations and exploration, GAMs and GAM outputs (e.g.,
 model fit), and model selection.