DOI: 10.5061/dryad.h18931zt3
title: Individual and temporal variation in movement patterns of wild alpine reindeer and implications for disease management

description: Animal behaviour is important for prevalence and outbreaks of infectious
 diseases, for instance by affecting individual interactions. Increasing
 the knowledge of individual movement patterns can provide better insight
 into disease prevalence and spread, helping to target efforts to minimise
 disease outbreaks. Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a fatal prion disease
 affecting cervids. CWD is transmitted by animal-to-animal contact and
 through the environment, thus individual variation in space use and social
 associations may influence disease transmission patterns and infection
 risk. CWD was detected in Norwegian alpine reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) in
 2016, and eradication of the infected population was implemented. A 3:1
 infection rate between males and females suggests sex-specific behavioural
 drivers. We utilised an extensive individual-based dataset of 149
 GPS-marked wild reindeer to investigate individual variation in movement
 patterns in terms of inter- and intra-annual home range size and site
 fidelity, and variation in home range overlap and distances between
 individuals. We aimed to identify patterns which could indicate higher
 potential disease risk. Females had larger annual and seasonal home ranges
 than males, except during calving and rut. Greater home range overlaps and
 shorter between-individual distances were found between same-sex
 individuals than different-sex individuals, except during the rut.
 Accordingly, the rut season stands out with greater male home ranges,
 greater home range overlap and shorter distances between males and between
 males and females, which could indicate that this season is critical for
 disease transmission. Measures to prevent disease spread should lower
 contact rates, e.g., by reducing the abundance of adult males before they
 mix with other groups during the rut. This can be achieved for instance by
 allowing earlier hunt on adult males when they are distributed in small
 male groups, to reduce the transmission risk and keep disturbance of other
 individuals low.
description: This information is available in the Materials and Methods
 section in the associated article (DOI: 10.1111/ecog.06957). 
description: # Norwegian alpine reindeer home range size, overlap, and
 between-individual distances
 ## Description of the data
 and file structure The datasets included here provide data from Norwegian
 wild alpine reindeer for analysing the following: * Seasonal home range
 sizes (dataset is named "Seasonal_HR_size_data") * Annual home
 range sizes (dataset is named "Annual_HR_size_data") *
 Inter-individual overlap (dataset is named
 "overlaptable_between_individuals") * Intra-individual home
 range overlap, i.e., site fidelity (datasets are named
 "site_fidelity_NF", "site_fidelity_SH", and
 "site_fidelity_SR", split into study populations) * Daily
 distance between nearest male and female individual. The files for the
 home range, between-individual overlap and distance analyses contain data
 from three populations of Norwegian wild alpine reindeer, whereas the
 files for the site fidelity analyses are separated into
 population-specific files (NF = Nordfjella, SH = Snøhetta, SR = Setesdal
 Ryfylke). The data files all contain multiple columns. In the datasets for
 the annual and seasonal home ranges: * RegNr: Registration number, unique
 to each individual. * area: home range area (either annual or seasonal
 depending on the dataset). * HRyear: home range year. We defined a home
 range year with the start in the calving season (May 1st) and end after
 the winter season (March 15th). This means that for the majority of the
 calendar year, the home range year will be the same, except between
 January 1st and May 1st. * Sex: the sex of the individual. 1 = male, 2 =
 female. * NrDays: Number of days tracked during the home range year
 (HRyear) or season, depending on the dataset (seasonal or annual home
 range). * Population: study population. NF = Nordfjella, SH = Snøhetta, SR
 = Setesdal Ryfylke. * Season: the season, defined as in the corresponding
 article. * id: a combination of the columns RegNr, HRyear, Season (only
 for the seasonal home range dataset), Sex, and NrDays (separated by a
 space between each). For the distance dataset (column names that are not
 already similar to the ones mentioned above are presented): * FK_SexCode:
 the sex of the unique individuals. 1 = male, 2 = female. * date: the date
 for the day the distance is calculated. * Month, Year and Day: the month,
 day and year (calendar year) the distance was calculated. * DayNr: the day
 of the year of the given date. Janueary 1st = day 1. * iddist: a
 combination of the columns RegNr, date, Season, Sex, and Population
 (separated by a space between each). * All columns starting with
 "i.": similar to the columns not starting with this, but for the
 other individual the distance is calculated between. * distance: the
 distance between the two individuals (in m). * sex.pair: a vector with the
 sex of the two individuals the distance is calculated between, separated
 by "-". 1-1 = male-male, 1-2 = male-female (or female-male), and
 2-2 = female-female. * sqrt.dist: the square root of the distance. For the
 overlap between individuals dataset (column names that are not already
 similar to the ones mentioned above are presented): * from: the id (a
 combination of the columns RegNr, HRyear, Season (only for the seasonal
 home range dataset), Sex, and NrDays (separated by a space between each)
 of the first individual the overlap is calculated between. * to: similar
 to from (see above), but for the other individual the overlap is
 calculated between). * include: a binomial column with 1 if to be included
 in the analyses, and 0 if not. * all columns starting with either
 "from." or "to.": similar to columns with similar
 names (except the prefix) found in the seasonal home range datasets (see
 above). * overlap.BA.T: the home range overlap between the given
 individuals (the given season and year). * overlap.bin: binomial column. 1
 = overlap &gt;= 0.1, and 0 = overlap &lt; 0.1. For the site fidelity
 analyses (column names that are not already similar to the ones mentioned
 above are presented): * All columns are similar to the ones found in the
 dataset for overlap between individuals. However for the site fidelity
 data, both the "from" and "to" individuals are the
 same individuals, but either different year (inter-annual site fidelity),
 or different season within the same year (intra-annual site fidelity). *
 SeasonsPair: the pair of seasons the site fidelity is calculated between.