No evidence for the consistent effect of supplementary feeding on home range size in terrestrial mammals
Data files
Apr 26, 2024 version files 20.09 KB
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Data_AO.csv
16.59 KB
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README.md
3.50 KB
Abstract
Food availability and distribution are key drivers of animal space use. Supplemental food provided by humans can be more abundant and predictable than natural resources. It is thus believed that supplementary feeding modifies the spatial behaviour of wildlife. Yet, such effects have not been tested quantitatively across species. Here, we analysed changes in home range size due to supplementary feeding in 23 species of terrestrial mammals using a meta-analysis of 28 studies. Additionally, we investigated the moderating effect of factors related to i) species biology (sex, body mass, taxonomic group), ii) feeding regimen (duration, amount, purpose), and iii) methods of data collection and analysis (source of data, estimator, spatial confinement). We found no consistent effect of supplementary feeding on changes in home range size. While an overall tendency of reduced home range was observed, moderators varied in the direction and strength of the trends. Our results suggest that multiple drivers and complex mechanisms of home range behaviour can make it insensitive to manipulation with supplementary feeding. The small number of available studies stands in contrast with the ubiquity and magnitude of supplementary feeding worldwide, highlighting a knowledge gap in our understanding of the effects of supplementary feeding on ranging behaviour.
README: Paper
No evidence for the consistent effect of supplementary feeding on home range size in terrestrial mammals
Author
Astrid Olejarz and Tomasz Podgórski
Data and Coding
https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.qjq2bvqp5
Description of the data and file structure
This README file describes the columns of the CSV file accompanying the above publication. The CSV file collects the data of all articles used for the meta-analysis. Cells with "NA" represent not available date. All analyses in R were performed based on the data collection in the CSV file.
Website - Website used for the created Boolean operator
Author - Main author of the article
Year - Year of publication of the article
Animal - Species name of the studied animal
Classification - Classification of the species based on the order
Classification - Classification of the species based on the diet
Country - The country in which the article has been conducted
Continent - The continent in which the article has been conducted
Location - Area within the country in which the article has been conducted
Group - Number of groups within the article; the group is divided by season, location and experimental group
Sex - Sex of the studied animal
SampleSizeF - Number of sampled species in the supplementary feeding group
SampleSizeC - Number of sampled species in the control group without supplementary feeding
Season - Number of seasons the experiment of supplementary feeding has been conducted
Category - Division of supplementary feeding in unintentional and intentional supplementary feeding
FeedingPlace - Division of the study area in free-ranging and enclosure
MethodCollection - Division of the method of collected tracking data
MethodEstimation - Division of the method of home range size estimation
BodyMassg - Body mass for each species of the study, based on the panTHERIA dataset
BodyMassC - Division of the body size in four categories (<1kg, 1-10kg, 10-100kg, >100kg)
TimeFeeding_Month - Duration of the supplementary feeding experiment in the scale of months
TimeFeedingC - Division of the duration of the supplementary feeding experiment in three categories (<6month, 6-12month, >12month)
AmountFood - Amount of supplementary food provided in the study
HR_Feeding – Original value of home range size under supplementary feeding
ScaleOriginal - Original scale of the home range size under supplementary feeding
HR_Feeding_km2 - Home range size under supplementary feeding in km^2
SD_Feeding - Original values of the variability of the data divided in SD (Standard Deviation), SE (Standard Error) or CI (Confidence Interval) for home range size under supplementary feeding
SD_Feeding_km2 - Standard deviation for home range size under supplementary feeding
HR_Control – Original value of home range size without supplementary feeding
HR_Control_km2 - Home range size without supplementary feeding in km^2
SD_Control - Original values of the variability of the data divided in SD (Standard Deviation), SE (Standard Error) or CI (Confidence Interval) for home range size without supplementary feeding
SD_Control_km2 - Standard deviation for home range size without supplementary feeding
Hedges - Hedges g, a measure of the effect size
Variance - Calculated variance of the Hedges g value
Notes - Additional information extracted from the article
Code/Software
R environment version 4.2.2
Methods
We used Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus, two publisher-independent global citation databases, to identify published articles that analysed the effect of supplementary feeding on home range size in terrestrial mammals.We extracted home range size, its standard deviation (SD), and sample size from each publication for the experimental group of animals with supplementary feeding and the control group without.For each home range comparison, we compiled information about the species, its taxonomic group (rodent, carnivore, and ungulate), individual's sex, supplementary food amount (limited or ad libitum) and feeding duration, spatial confinement (free-ranging or enclosure), source of spatial data (telemetry or capture-mark-recapture), and home range estimator (kernel density estimation (KDE) or minimum convex polygon (MCP)). Moreover, we divided the publications into intentional and unintentional feeding studies.To measure the change of the home range size from no-feeding to feeding treatment, we used the Hedges'g estimator of the effect size.Meta-analytic mixed-effects models, fitted with the function rma.rm of the metafor package, were used to examine the effects of supplementary feeding on home range size.