I'm not falling for that: Boldness and trappability of small mammals decline in urban reserves
Data files
Jan 05, 2026 version files 10.16 GB
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20250117_small_mammal_behaviour_v2.R
40.44 KB
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20250117_small_mammal_trapping.csv
15.32 KB
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20250121_camera_sampling_effort_persite.csv
92 B
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20250127_trap_success_species.csv
1.62 KB
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20250127_visitation_rate_species.csv
2.24 KB
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20250208_visit_interaction_pa_v2.csv
24.74 KB
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20250706_camera_trapping_sm_full_v2.csv
360.60 KB
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README.md
7.10 KB
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tagged.zip
10.16 GB
Abstract
We aimed to analyse the influence of urbanisation and environmental variables (i.e., moonlight and temperature) on the activity levels, boldness, and trappability of small mammals. We live-trapped small mammals in five urban reserves, each paired with a natural forest counterpart within Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, New South Wales, Australia. We used Elliot traps paired with camera traps to observe the activity, boldness, and trappability of small mammals. This dataset includes all the tagged camera-trap captures, the curated CSV files obtained from the images, as well as the data obtained from the captures in the Elliot traps. We found that the activity of small mammals did not differ between the forest and urban reserve sites. However, we found that the most active species in urban reserves was the exotic Rattus rattus, whereas R. fuscipes was the most active species in forest sites. We found that the small mammals in the urban reserves were less bold and had lower trappability than their forest counterparts. This could be explained by the bait type, and/or traits of the small mammal species (mostly R. rattus) that were dominant in the urban reserves. Environmental variables (moonlight and temperature) did not vary substantially over the study period and had no significant influence on small mammal activity or trappability. This dataset could be reused in small mammal behavioural studies.
Dataset DOI: 10.5061/dryad.18931zd8w
Description of the data and file structure
File: tagged.zip
Description: Zip folder of the camera trapping stations. Each folder contains pictures tagged in Digikamversion 8.5.0 (https://www.digikam.org) with the variables used in the study.
Folders:
- K-1-A1 to U-5-E2-2 are IDs of the camera trapping stations.
- Folder K-5-A10-NW was included intentionally to depict the only camera trapping station with a technical failure.
File: 20250208_visit_interaction_pa_v2.csv
Description: Data on visits and interactions of small mammals with Elliot traps
Variables
- site_type: forest vs urban reserves
- species: small mammal species identified in the camera traps
- species_origin: wether the small mammal species is native or exotic
- moonlight_percentage: percentage of moonlight on the sampling night of the camera trap capture as reported in https://moonphases.org
- temperature: Temperature value in centigrades obtained from the cameras Browning® trail
- season: spring vs autumn
- visit_ID: Identifier of the visit that contains the site identifier, the camera trapping station, the code for the small mammal caotured, the sampling night and the consecutive number of the visits.
- interaction_pa: Presence or absence of interaction of the small mammals with the Elliot traps.
- time_interaction: Length of the interaction in seconds.
- capture_pa: presence of absence of capture of small mammal in the observed Elliot trap.
File: 20250127_visitation_rate_species.csv
Description: Data on visitation rate of small mammals to Elliot trap stations per species
Variables
- Site: site identifier.
- site_type: forest vs urban reserves
- species: small mammal species identified in the camera traps
- n: number of captures per sites
- sampling_effort: number of sampling nights per site, accounting for all five camera trap stations.
- visitation_rate: n divided by sampling effort
File: 20250121_camera_sampling_effort_persite.csv
Description: Data on camera trapping effort per sampling site
Variables
- site: site identifier
- sampling_effort: number of sampling nights per site, accounting for all five camera trap stations.
File: 20250706_camera_trapping_sm_full_v2.csv
Description: Data on camera trapping effort per sampling site
Variables
- order_ID: Identifier to order the data.
- site_type: forest vs urban reserves
- site: site identifier
- station: camera trapping station identifier
- genus: genus of the small mammal identified in the camera trap picture
- species: small mammal species identified in the camera trap picture
- species_origin
- species_origin: whether the small mammal species is native or exotic
- species_group: group of small mammal of the species identified based on mammal size.
- season: spring vs autumn
- DateTimeOriginal: Date and time of the camera trap capture.
- Date: Date of the camera trap capture.
- Time: Time of the camera trap capture.
- delta.time.secs: Difference in seconds with the first capture of the species in each camera trap station.
- delta.time.mins: Difference in minutes with the first capture of the species in each camera trap station.
- delta.time.hours: Difference in hours with the first capture of the species in each camera trap station.
- delta.time.days: Difference in days with the first capture of the species in each camera trap station.
- independent_capture: whether the species capture is independent from the previous visit of the species.
- moonlight_percentage: percentage of moonlight on the sampling night of the camera trap capture as reported in https://moonphases.org
- temperature: Temperature value in centigrades obtained from the cameras Browning® trail
- interaction_seconds: Length of the interaction in seconds.
- interaction_pa: Presence or absence of interaction of the small mammals with the Elliot traps.
- behaviour: category of the behaviour of the small mammal captured in the camera trap station
- behaviour_simple: category of the behaviour of the small mammal captured in the camera trap station simplified
- bold_behaviour: whether the behaviour of the small mammal towards the Elliot trap is bold or shy
- sp_key: small mammal species code
- trap_night: consecutive trap night on the trapping station
- visit_n: consecutive visit to the trapping station
- visit_ID: Identifier of the visit that contains the site identifier, the camera trapping station, the code for the small mammal caotured, the sampling night and the consecutive number of the visits.
- trap_interaction: ordination of the camera trap visit on consecutive captures.
- n_individuals: number of individuals observed in the camera trap capture.
- intraspecific_behaviour: description of the intraspecific behaviour when there are two individuals in the trapping station.
- trap_state: Elliot trap open or closed
- individual_ID: identity of the captured individual when identified in the Elliot trap.
- sex: sex of the captured individual.
File: 20250117_small_mammal_trapping.csv
Description: Data on Elliot trap captures of small mammals
Variables
- site_type: forest vs urban reserves
- site: site identifier
- individual: identifier of the captured individual
- date: date of the capture
- season: spring vs autumn
- trap_ID: Grid ID of the Elliot trap where the small mammal was captured
- weight: weight of the small mammal captured in the Elliot trap
- body_lenght: body length of the small mammal captured in the Elliot trap
- sex: sex of the small mammal captured in the Elliot trap
- stage: stage of the small mammal captured in the Elliot trap
- genus: genus of the small mammal captured in the Elliot trap
- species: species of the small mammal captured in the Elliot trap
- recapture: whether the individual was recaptured
- camera_capture: whether the capture was recorded in a camera trap
File: 20250127_trap_success_species.csv
Description: Data on trap success on the camera traps
Variables
- site: site identifier
- site_type: forest vs urban reserves
- species: small mammal species identified in the camera traps
- n: number of captures per species
- trap_success: number of captures divided by the sampling effort of the camera traps in the sampling site
Code/software
All data analyses where perfomed in RStudio using the R version 4.4.1. The code was developed by Margarita Gil-Fernandez, and it has been attached under the name 20250117_small_mammal_behaviour_v2.R. For the best use of the code, it is recommended to set two sampling directories for the extraction of metadata from the pictures, one for the tagged pictures. If the user wants to rename the pictures, these can be renamed into a different folder. The remaining analyses can be run by placing all the provided csv files into one single folder, which would serve as the main working directory.