Ecology of domestic dogs Canis familiaris as an emerging reservoir of Guinea worm Dracunculus medinensis infection Robbie A. McDonald, Jared K. Wilson-Aggarwal, George J.F. Swan, Cecily E.D. Goodwin, Tchonfienet Moundai, DieudonnŽ Sankara, Gautam Biswas, James A. Zingeser The data submission should allow for repetition of the analyses in the paper. If you would like to use or analyse these data for other purposes, please get in touch, as we have more data for additional animals that are not included in these analyses, perhaps because key variables were not available, but which might be suitable for your purposes. We have submitted 4 data files: pond_data.csv File includes the data for analyses of dog visitation to the vicinity of ponds and includes variables: id GPS (Y if the pond was identified in a ground-truthing survey, N if it was only identified from satellite imagery) field.site (KM.AW = Kakale-Mberi and Awine, GOM.LAR.DIG = Gomba, Largana and Digangali, MAG.SAO = Magrao and Sawata). Note that Digangali is a satellite village of Largana but was not used in the analysis. nn.hh.dist (distance to nearest dog-owning household in m) unique.dogs (how many different dogs were recorded in the vicinity of the pond) total.visits (number of independent visits by dogs to the vicinty of the pond). Spatial_data.csv This file is a subset of the whole spatial data from dog tracking. This file contains the data from 121 dogs, on which the model of the number of fixes within 100 m of water bodies is based. File includes data for analyses of dog ranging behaviour, Guinea worm infection and water body usage and includes variables: GW_CGWP Guinea worm records from Chad Guinea Worm Eradication Program (0 No history / 1 history of worm infection) sex age (in months but reported in years for dogs >1 year old) water_provision (whether households provided water for animals, Yes/No) hunting_activity (whether owners reported taking the dogs hunting, Never, Occasional, Often, NA) settlement (KM.AW = Kakale Mberi with Awine - Kakale in the paper; GOM.LAR.DIG = Gomba, Largana, Digangali - Largana in the paper; MAG-SAO, Magrao and Saouata/Sawata - Magrao in the paper) condition (Body condition score classified as Moderate or Poor) days_monitored (number of complete days for which GPS data were collected and used) number_unique_ponds_visited (number of different ponds visited by the dog, GPS fixes in the proximity of the pond) core_range (60% kernel density estimate of home range) total_range (100% minimum convex polygon) number_pond_fixes (number of fixes from the dog in the vicinity (<=100m) of water bodies GW_field_records (our field collected reports of Guinea worm infection history of the dog, as 0/1). Note that the dogs in rows 50 and 113 are missing these data, hence minor difference in sample sizes of analyses using our field data and those using CGWEP data. There are two Dog_GW_data files. These contain dog characteristics and husbandry practices, Guinea worm infection history and dietary data used in most analyses in the paper. Dog_GW_data_final_model.csv File contains only the data from dogs used in the final analysis of Guinea worm infection. In this subsetted file, there are 102 dogs. 100 are used in analyses using our field data and another 2 dogs (in rows 30 and 59) have data from the Chad Guinea Worm Eradication Program. Dog_GW_data_full.csv File contains data for wider analyses, including variables that did not appear in >50% of models in the top model set and were excluded from final analyses. There are 108 dogs in this file. The variables in these two files are similar and are as described above, with the addition of the following: dietary_fish_percentage (the estimated percentage contribution of fish in the diet of this individual dog as modelled using stable isotope analysis) dietary_fish (as above but a proportion) worms (the total number of worms that had been recorded to emerge from that dog in its life)