This DATSETNAMEreadme.txt file was generated on 07-03-2022 by Mahmood Soofi GENERAL INFORMATION 1. Title of Dataset: Quantifying the relationship between prey density, livestock and illegal killing of leopards 2. Authors' Contact information Principal Investigator Contact Information Name: Mahmood Soofi Institution: University of Gottingen, Germany Email: mahmood.soofi@biologie.uni-goettingen.de 3. Date of data collection: December 2021 4. Geographic location of data collection: Iran 5. Information about funding sources that supported the collection of the data: - Feodor Lynen Fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany. - PRIME programme of the German Academic Exchange Service from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). SHARING/ACCESS INFORMATION 1. Licenses/restrictions placed on the data: Wild prey abundance, protected areas and leopard mortality data should be credited to Iran's Department of Environment (www.doe.ir.org DoE 2021) and this study. 2. Links to other publicly accessible locations of the data: - wild prey data are not publicly available 3. Was data derived from another source? yes/no A. If yes, list source(s): - elevation (source: mean elevation from a 30-m resolution digital elevation model, was obtained from the NASA Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (https:// search.earthdata.nasa.gov)) - road length (source: http://download.geofabrik.de/236 and https://extract.bbbike.org/) - protected area (Iran's Department of Environment) - human density (We obtained this from Gridded Population of the World v.4 at a 1-km spatial resolution from the Socioeconomic Data and Application Center (http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/data/se, 2015) - livestock densities (data on livestock (i.e., cattle, sheep and goats) was derived from the Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO (http://www.fao.org, 2005) 4. Recommended citation for this dataset: DATA & FILE OVERVIEW 1. File List: 1.1 ReadMe text file 1.2 leopard killing events data (file name = killevents) 1.3 site covariate data (file name = siteCov) 1.4 wild prey abundance data (file name = wildprey) 1.5 R-codes for single-visit N-mixture model (file name = R_single-visit N-mixture model) METHODOLOGICAL INFORMATION 1. Description of methods used for collection/generation of data: The leopard illegal killing events data (2007-2019) were collected by Iranian rangers across the country (unpublished data of Iranian Department of Environment). The wild prey data provided by Iran's Department of Environment (DoE), these prey abundances were collected annually (November-December) by skilled rangers within a regular monitoring program managed by DoE throughout the country. The site covariate data were obtained through different sources All these data were extracted and assigned per grid cell (20*20 km2) across Iran using ArcGIS version 10.7.1 (ESRI USA). 2. Methods for processing the data: The data were analysed using the single-visit N-mixture modelling (Royle 2004 Biometrics; Sólymos et al. 2012 Environmetrics; Kéry and Royle 2021 AHMbook Vol-2) approach using 'unmarked' R package (Fiske & Chandler 2011) in R software version 3.3.6 (R Core Team 2020). DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR: - ReadMe text file - leopard killing events data [file name = killevents] - site covariate data [siteCovs] - wild prey abundance data [wildprey] - R-codes for single-visit N-mixture model [R_single-visit N-mixture mode] 1. Number of variables: 7 variables/covariates 2. Number of cases/rows: 4000 grid cells/rows (sampling unit = grid cell) 3. Variable List: Response variable: leopard killing events (2007-2019) Covariates/variables data include: 3.1. elevation (m) 3.2. road length (km) 3.3. ranger stations (counts) 3.4. human density (km2) 3.5. livestock density (km2) 3.6. protected area_size 3.8. wild prey abundance (2007-2019) include censuses (total count approach) of ten wild prey species (ungulates) across Iran. Please cite this dataset: Soofi, M., Qashqaei, A. T, Mousavi, M., Hadipour, E., Filla, M., Kiabi, B. Bleyhl, B., Ghoddousi, A., Royle, A., Pavey, R. Ch., Khorozyan, I., Waltert, M. (2022a). Data from: Quantifying the relationship between prey density, livestock and illegal killing of leopards. Dryad Digital Repository. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.gtht76hp7.