Data from: Fear of the dark? contrasting impacts of humans vs lynx on diel activity of roe deer across Europe ...

• Main Authors: Bonnot, Nadège C., Couriot, Ophélie, Berger, Anne, Cagnacci, Francesca, Ciuti, Simone, De Groeve, Johannes, Gehr, Benedikt, Heurich, Marco, Kjellander, Petter, Kröschel, Max, Morellet, Nicolas, Sönnichsen, Leif, Hewison, A.J. Mark
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Dryad 2019
• Subjects: Accelerometers; Crepuscularity; Human Footprint; nocturnality; Diurnality; Temporal partitioning; Lynx; Lynx lynx lynx
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.1zcrjdfnm; https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.1zcrjdfnm

Humans, as super predators, can have strong effects on wildlife behaviour, including profound modifications of diel activity patterns. Subsequent to the return of large carnivores to human-modified ecosystems, many prey species have adjusted their spatial behaviour to the contrasting landscapes of fear generated by both their natural predators and anthropogenic pressures. The effects of predation risk on temporal shifts in diel activity of prey, however, remain largely unexplored in human-dominated landscapes. We investigated the influence of the density of lynx (Lynx lynx), a nocturnal predator, on the diel activity patterns of their main prey, the roe deer (Capreolus capreolus), across a gradient of human disturbance and hunting at the European scale. Based on 11 million activity records from 431 individually GPS-monitored roe deer in 12 populations within the EURODEER network (http://eurodeer.org), we investigated how lynx predation risk in combination with both lethal and non-lethal human activities ... : deer_id Roe deer identity – individual-specific unique identifier for each monitored roe deer year Monitoring year [2003-2015] julian_date Number of days since January 1st of a given year area_subarea Study area identity subarea_name Name of the subarea – when several subareas in a given study site study_name Name of the study site hfi Human Footprint Index – mean index of the overall level of human activities (based on Venter et al. 2016) within each individual’s seasonal home-ranges [4 - 34] predator_presence Predation risk - indexed by the presence of lynx and its relative density for each study site no_lynx = absence of lynx lynx_low = low density of lynx (sites with transient lynx and densities of ~ 1 lynx/100km²) lynx_high = high density of lynx (sites with densities of ~ 2 lynx/100km²) sex m = males f = females diurnality_index Index of diurnality (continuous) – relative level of activity during daylight compared to nighttime for each individual on each given day (see more details on the calculation ...