Data for: Temporal variations in female moose responses to roads and logging in the absence of wolves

Gagnon, Mireille1 ; Lesmerises, Frédéric2 ; St-Laurent, Martin-Hugues1

Published Feb 01, 2024 on Dryad. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.dfn2z357t

Cite this dataset

Gagnon, Mireille; Lesmerises, Frédéric; St-Laurent, Martin-Hugues (2024). Data for: Temporal variations in female moose responses to roads and logging in the absence of wolves [Dataset]. Dryad. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.dfn2z357t

Abstract

Animal movements, needed to acquire food resources, avoid predation risk, and find breeding partners, are influenced by annual and circadian cycles. Decisions related to movement reflect a quest to maximize benefits while limiting costs, especially in heterogeneous landscapes. Predation by wolves (Canis lupus) has been identified as the major driver of moose (Alces alces) habitat selection patterns, and linear features have been shown to increase wolf efficiency to travel, hunt and kill prey. However, few studies have described moose behavioral response to roads and logging in Canada in the absence of wolves. We thus characterized temporal changes (i.e., day phases and biological periods) in eastern moose (Alces alces americana) habitat selection and space use patterns near a road network in a wolf-free area located south of the St. Lawrence River (eastern Canada). We used telemetry data collected on 18 females between 2017 and 2019 to build resource selection functions and mixed linear regressions to explain variations in habitat selection patterns, home-range size and movement rates. Female moose selected forest stands providing forage when movement was not impeded by snow cover (i.e., spring/green-up, summer/rearing, fall/rut) and stands offering protection against incidental predation during calving. In winter, home-range size decreased with an increasing proportion of stands providing food and shelter against harsh weather, limiting the energetic costs associated with movement. Our results reaffirmed the year-round aversive effect of roads, even in the absence of wolves, but the magnitude of this avoidance differed between day phases, being lower during the “dusk-night-dawn” phase, perhaps due to a lower level of human activity on and near roads. Female moose behavior in our study area was similar to what was observed in landscapes where moose and wolves cohabit, suggesting that the risk associated with humans, perceived as another type of predator, and with incidental predators (coyote Canis latrans, black bear Ursus americanus), equates that of wolf predation in heavily managed landscapes.

README: Data for: "Temporal variations in moose responses to roads and logging in the absence of wolves"

https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.dfn2z357t

We have uploaded the datasets used for each analysis for each biological period. The GPS telemetry data are not joined, but all the subsquent data resulting from the data management prior to analyses are shared, as well as the Rscripts.

Description of the data and file structure

Data files are structured for each analysis (MovementRate, HomeRangeSize, ResourceSelectionFunction - RSF), and for each biological period (Winter, Spring, Calving, Rearing, Rut). Scripts can be found in each "analysis" folder and associated datasets too.

As native French speakers, our scripts are annotated in French (!!) and the title of some datasets are also using French acronyms/abbreviations. So Movement Rate is referred to as "MR" in the script names but "TM" in the dataset names (for "Taux de mouvement"), and Home-range Size is referred to as "HRS" in the script names but "DV" in the dataset names (for "Domaine Vitaux").

Habitat selection files

id: individual identification
date: day, month, and year
day: day phase (coded 1 if yes and 0 if not)
period: biological periods
presence: GPS locations (coded 1) and random points (coded 0)
stand0: presence of 0-4 m habitats (coded 1 if yes and 0 if not)
c4: presence of 4-7 m coniferous stands (coded 1 if yes and 0 if not)
dm4: presence of 4-7 m deciduous and mixed stands (coded 1 if yes and 0 if not)
dm7: presence of 7-12 m deciduous and mixed stands (coded 1 if yes and 0 if not)
dm12: presence of +12 m deciduous and mixed stands (coded 1 if yes and 0 if not)
notdense_c: presence of +7 m low density coniferous stands (coded 1 if yes and 0 if not)
dense_c: presence of +7 m high density coniferous stands (coded 1 if yes and 0 if not)
water: presence of wetlands and water bodies (coded 1 if yes and 0 if not)
slope: slope (º)
elev_km: elevation (km)
slope_sd: centered slope
idyear: individual-year combination
dawndusknight: dusk, dawn, and night phases (coded 1 if yes and 0 if not)
pav_km: minimum Euclidian distances to the nearest paved road in km
frt_km: minimum Euclidian distances to the nearest forest road in km
pav400: presence of paved roads in buffer zone width 0-400 m (coded 1 if yes and 0 if not)
pav250: presence of paved roads in buffer zone width 0-250 m (coded 1 if yes and 0 if not)
frt250: presence of forest roads in buffer zone width 0-250 m (coded 1 if yes and 0 if not)
pav150: presence of paved roads in buffer zone width 0-150 m (coded 1 if yes and 0 if not)
frt150: presence of forest roads in buffer zone width 0-150 m (coded 1 if yes and 0 if not)
pav100: presence of paved roads in buffer zone width 0-100 m (coded 1 if yes and 0 if not)
frt100: presence of forest roads in the buffer zone width 0-100 m (coded 1 if yes and 0 if not)
frt75: presence of forest roads in buffer zone width 0-75 m (coded 1 if yes and 0 if not)

Home range files

id: individual identification
period: biological periods
notdense_c: proportion of +7 m low density coniferous stands
stand0: proportion of 0-4 m habitats
dm4: proportion of 4-7 m deciduous and mixed stands
dense_c: proportion of +7 m high density coniferous stands
water: proportion of wetlands and water bodies
dm7: proportion of 7-12 m deciduous and mixed stands
c4: proportion of 4-7 m coniferous stands
dm12: proportion of +12 m deciduous and mixed stands
elev_km: mean elevation (km)
slope: mean slope (º)
slope_sd: centered slope
idyear: individual-year combination
area_km: home-range sizes in km2
dense_frt: density of forest roads in the home range
dense_pav: density of paved roads in the home range
dense_roads: density of paved and forest roads in the home range
area_log: log-transformed home-range sizes

Movement rate files

area: ellipses area around each step in m2
date: day, month and year
id: individual identification
day: day phase (coded 1 if yes and 0 if not)
period: biological periods
time: hour, minute and second
notdense_c: proportion of +7 m low density coniferous stands
stand0: proportion of 0-4 m habitats
dm4: proportion of 4-7 m deciduous and mixed stands
dense_c: proportion of +7 m high density coniferous stands
water: proportion of wetlands and water bodies
dm7: proportion of 7-12 m deciduous and mixed stands
c4: proportion of 4-7 m coniferous stands
dm12: proportion of +12 m deciduous and mixed stands
elev_km: mean elevation (km)
slope: mean slope (º)
slope_sd: centered slope
idyear: individual-year combination
rate_mh: estimated movement rates in m/h
rate_kmh: estimated movement rates in km/h
frt_km: minimum Euclidian distances to the nearest forest road in km
pav_km: minimum Euclidian distances to the nearest paved road in km
rate_log: log-transformed movement rates
slope_coeff: coefficients of variation of slope
dawndusknight: dusk, dawn, and night phases (coded 1 if yes and 0 if not)
pav400: presence of paved roads in buffer zone width 0-400 m (coded 1 if yes and 0 if not)
pav250: presence of paved roads in buffer zone width 0-250 m (coded 1 if yes and 0 if not)
frt250: presence of forest roads in buffer zone width 0-250 m (coded 1 if yes and 0 if not)
pav150: presence of paved roads in buffer zone width 0-150 m (coded 1 if yes and 0 if not)
frt150: presence of forest roads in buffer zone width 0-150 m (coded 1 if yes and 0 if not)
pav100: presence of paved roads in buffer zone width 0-100 m (coded 1 if yes and 0 if not)
frt100: presence of forest roads in the buffer zone width 0-100 m (coded 1 if yes and 0 if not)
frt75: presence of forest roads in buffer zone width 0-75 m (coded 1 if yes and 0 if not)

Code/Software

Joined are the R scripts that were used to manage and analyse the data.

Methods

Telemetry data were collected on 20 moose (2 males, 18 females; 151,029 GPS locations) between 2017 and 2019. Capture and handling took place in February and March 2017, and our protocols were approved by the ministère de l’Environnement, de la Lutte contre les Changements Climatiques, de la Faune et des Parcs (hereafter MELCCFP; wildlife management permit SEG # 2017-02-10-010-01-S-F) and by the Animal Welfare Committee of the Université du Québec à Rimouski (hereafter UQAR; certificate CPA #68-17-183).

We delineated 5 biological periods (winter, spring/green-up, calving, summer/rearing, fall/rut) and 2 day phases (day, dusk-night-dawn) in order to consider the temporal variations in moose behavior associated with these factors. We determined the cut-off dates of the biological periods by identifying breaks in the distribution of mean movement rates in function of Julian days and using the available knowledge on moose ecology (Hundertmark, 2007; Leblond et al., 2010); we did so for each individual-year combination. We defined day phases using the official sunrise and sunset times (National Research Council Canada, 2021): the day was bounded by the 60-minute period following sunrise to the 60-minute period preceding sunset, and dusk-night-dawn was bounded by the 60-minute period preceding sunset to the 60-minute period following sunrise.

We defined landcover types using 1: 20,000 ecoforestry maps published by the ministère des Ressources naturelles et des Forêts (hereafter MRNF) and combined information from two mapping exercises (4^th and 5^th decennial inventories) to create updated annual maps to account for anthropogenic disturbance, and fit the GPS data collected from our collared moose (from 2017 to 2019). We regrouped the map polygons into a total of 8 landcover types relevant to moose ecology based on stand cover, composition, height, age, disturbance, land types, and representativity.

We estimated movement rates (in m/h) for each individual and for each step (i.e., the trajectory linking two successive locations spaced by a 2 h interval) using Euclidean distances. We delineated seasonal home ranges using the kernel method based on Brownian bridges (Horne et al., 2007). We characterized moose habitat selection patterns using resource selection functions (hereafter RSF; Manly et al., 2002) with the different landcover types and other covariates (elevation, slope, day phase, presence of forest and paved roads in buffer zone) for each biological period. For each biological period, we retained only combinations of individual ID – year for which we had data for the entire or nearly the entire duration of the biological period (i.e., ~4% of the ID – year were removed from the dataset for the statistical analyses). We compared moose space use patterns (movement rates and home-range sizes) between biological periods using an analysis of variance (ANOVA) with repeated measures followed by a multiple comparison test (Tukey). The RSF we used to describe the habitat selection patterns was a mixed logistic regression contrasting GPS locations (coded 1) with random points (coded 0) with different combinations of the following independent variables: landcover types, topography variables, day phases, and the presence of forest and paved roads in the buffer zone around each location.

Funding

Ministère des Transports, Award: N/A

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, Award: 2016-05196, Discovery Grant

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, Award: 2022-04307, Discovery Grant

Ministère de l’Environnement, de la Lutte contre les changements climatiques, de la Faune et des Parcs, Award: N/A