Mammalian community structure varies with distance between protected areas in the Omo valley, southwest Ethiopia

Rapid human population growth in Ethiopia has resulted in the degradation of vast areas of wildlife habitats due to agricultural expansion, infrastructure development, and urbanization. The Omo Valley in the southwestern part of Ethiopia has been particularly affected by land use changes, but despite its ecological importance, few relevant studies have been conducted there in the last two decades. Our aim is to provide updated and scientifically verifiable information for medium and large terrestrial mammal species richness and community structure in four Protected Areas in the Omo Valley. We used bycatch camera trap data from a large carnivore survey and nonparametric incidence-based estimators for data analysis. A total of 52 mammals from nine orders and eighteen families were recorded, of which approximately 29.4% are listed as globally threatened and one as an endemic subspecies. We present the current species lists and compare them with historical records and observed the highest s..., Camera trap surveys for the purpose of the large carnivore study took place from 2020 to 2022 in CCNP, MNP, TCCA and ONP for a two-month period each.  Due to the large carnivore target the grid size was informed by the smallest home range sizes for carnivores in the regions (Asfaw et al., in review). We used a mixture of Bushnell Trophy Trail Camera 119717cw (Bushnell, California, USA), Minox DTC 550 (Minox, Wetzlar, Germany), Dorr Snapshot Trail Camera (DÖRR, Hamburg, Germany) and Rollei WK cameras (Rollei, Hamburg, Germany). The camera trap survey lasted for 10301 camera days (2799 in ONP; 3089 in TCCA; 717 in MNP and 3696 in CCNP)
We used Quantum GIS (QGIS) 3.24 Vector Grid Research Tool (Quantum GIS Development Team, 2021) to divide each protected area into 25 km2 grid squares. The center point of each grid cell was then determined using the QGIS Polygon Centroid Geometry Tool (Quantum GIS Development Team, 2018) from which the geographic coordinates were extracted and uploaded..., , # Data from: Mammalian community structure varies with distance between protected areas in the Omo valley, southwest Ethiopia

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.x0k6djhvt](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.x0k6djhvt)

## Description of the data and file structure

Each dataset is structured as a single data frame with the following columns:

1. Camera trap ID: Unique identifier for each camera trap (e.g., FG1, HB2).
2. Species Name: Common name of the detected species (e.g., African lion).
3. Presence/absence (1/0) of each species at each camera trap location.
4. Species_Richness_Dataframe_Chebera_Churchura_National_Park.xls 34.82 KB
5. Species_Richness_Dataframe_Maze_National_Park.xls 28.67 KB
6. Species_Richness_Dataframe_Omo_National_Park.xls 36.86 KB
7. Species_Richness_Dataframe_Tama_Community_Conservation_Area.csv 3.31 KB

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