Data from: Do wild ungulates experience higher stress with humans than with large carnivores? ...

• Main Authors: Zbyryt, Adam, Bubnicki, Kuba W., Kuijper, Dries P.J., Dehnhard, Martin, Churski, Marcin, Schmidt, Krzysztof
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Dryad 2017
• Subjects: Capreolus capereolus; predation risk; Cervus elaphus; Lynx lynx; stress hormone; Glucocorticoids; bayesian analysis; Canis lupus; Lynx
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.p2f4b; https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.p2f4b

Predation is a major selective pressure for prey; however, the stress response to predation risk and the relative importance of natural versus anthropogenic stress factors in wild populations of animals have rarely been studied. We investigated the level of fecal glucocorticoid metabolites (FGMs) in 6 populations of red deer and roe deer exposed to potentially different levels of stress, resulting from both natural (predator presence, forest cover, undergrowth, ungulate density, and temperature) and anthropogenic (hunting harvest, percentage of build-up areas, and road density) factors. We found the highest and most variable FGM concentrations in both ungulates in areas without large carnivores, and the lowest and least variable FGM levels in areas with wolf and lynx. Anthropogenic factors (hunting harvest, roads, and built-up area) positively correlated with the gradient of FGM levels in both species. Both the mean and the variance of the FGM concentrations measured within populations of both red deer and ... : FGM and environmental data, red deerFull database of fecal glucucocorticoid metabolites (FGM) concentration in pellets of red deer (Cervus elaphus) collected in 6 areas in Poland along with environmental data (see text for details on sources of data).data_red_deer.csvFGM and environmental data, roe deerFull database of fecal glucucocorticoid metabolites (FGM) concentration in pellets of roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) collected in 6 areas in Poland along with environmental data (see text for details on sources of data).data_roe_deer.csv ...