Lion pride size versus feeding group size

The attached dataset provides a sampled distribution of 3230 feeding groups of adult female lions in relation to size of the pride that those females belonged to in Serengeti National park, Tanzania. Ecological theory suggests that large social groups of carnivores should have reduced foraging efficiency because they encounter prey no more frequently than solitary hunters, but the entire group must share any prey they encounter. We developed behaviorally-based foraging models to show that fragmentation of large social groups into smaller hunting subgroups or mutual cooperation during hunting are both plausible hypothetical mechanisms capable of sustaining larger lion prides. The attached dataset from the Serengeti ecosystem demonstrates that lion prides typically fragment into small hunting groups that are well approximated by an exponential distribution of group sizes typical of fission-fusion social systems. A model linking fission-fusion group dynamics with predator-prey interaction ..., Lion social groups were sampled by vehicle every day by traversing the Serengeti National Park and from VHS radio-collar signals. If the group was feeding, the number of adult females in the group was noted, as well as the total number of adult females in the pride that the feeding group belonged to.
, , # Lion pride size versus feeding group size

## Description of the data and file structure

Data for the paper are provided in the attached data file: Feeding_groups_vs_pride_size_Serengeti.txt. This is an exceptionally simple dataset, aggregating data from Serengeti National Park on the number of adult females found in lion feeding groups on an ad hoc basis over the course of a multi-decadal field study led by Prof. Craig Packer at the University of Minnesota. Basic procedures contributing to the dataset can be found in C. Packer (2023), The Lion, Princeton University Press.  There are 3560 observations in the dataset, with each observation on a separate line in the file. The variable 'Pride' refers to the number of adult females in the pride to which the feeding group belongs. The variable 'Females' refers to the number of females in the feeding group that was observed. In each case, the variables represent integer count data, with no SI units.

## Code/Software

6 files are archived ...,