DOI: 10.5061/dryad.prr4xgxmj
title: Predator biomass, prey biomass landcover and climate data from spotted hyaena and lion sites in Africa

description: The spotted hyaena (Crocuta crocuta Erxleben) and the lion (Panthera leo
 Linnaeus) are two of the most abundant and charismatic large mammalian
 carnivores in Africa and yet both are experiencing declining populations
 and significant pressures from environmental change. However, with few
 exceptions, most studies have focused on influences upon spotted hyaena
 and lion populations within individual sites, rather than synthesising
 data from multiple locations. This has impeded the identification of
 over-arching trends behind the changing biomass of these large predators.
 Using Partial Least Squares regression models, influences upon population
 biomass were therefore investigated, focusing upon prey biomass,
 temperature, precipitation and vegetation cover. Additionally, as both
 species are in competition with one other for food, the influence of
 competition and evidence of environmental partitioning were assessed. Our
 results indicate that spotted hyaena biomass is more strongly influenced
 by environmental conditions than lion, with larger hyaena populations in
 areas with warmer winters, cooler summers, less drought and more semi-open
 vegetation cover. Competition was found to have a negligible influence
 upon spotted hyaena and lion populations, and environmental partitioning
 is suggested, with spotted hyaena population biomass greater in areas with
 more semi-open vegetation cover. Moreover, spotted hyaena is most heavily
 influenced by the availability of medium-sized prey biomass, whereas lion
 is influenced more by large size prey biomass. Given the influences
 identified upon spotted hyaena populations in particular, the results of
 this study could be used to highlight populations potentially at greatest
 risk of decline, such as in areas with warming summers and increasingly
 arid conditions.
description: The latitude and longitude data does not indicate the exact
 locations of the species populations. The following information was taken
 from the Methods section of the paper to further explain the location
 points: 'Unless otherwise stated in the original
 publications or by Hatton et al. (2015), the boundaries of the sites were
 taken to be the entire area, i.e. the entire national park, national
 reserve, game reserve, or district. The Serengeti ecosystem datasets in
 Hatton et al. (2015) were derived from a number of different publications,
 therefore, the boundaries of this site were taken from a map of the
 Serengeti ecosystem (Hopcraft 2008).' 'The
 centre point of each site was the point where the median latitude and
 longitude intersected. Median latitude was calculated from the most
 northerly and southerly latitudes of each location. The same was performed
 for longitude. This was done using Image Landsat Google Earth Pro
 (2013).' 'For each site, the type of
 vegetation in each pixel (each 1 km2) was recorded along two transects
 with widths of 1 km. The north-south transect ran through the centre point
 of the site, to the most northern and southern boundaries. The equivalent
 procedure was conducted for the east-west transect.'