Dataset for: Cattle aggregations at shared resources create potential parasite exposure hotspots for wildlife

Globally rising livestock populations and declining wildlife numbers are likely to dramatically change disease risk for wildlife and livestock, especially at resources where they congregate. However, limited understanding of interspecific transmission dynamics at these hotspots hinders disease prediction or mitigation. In this study, we combined gastrointestinal nematode density and host foraging activity measurements from our prior work in this system with three estimates of parasite-sharing capacity to investigate how interspecific exposures alter the relative riskiness of an important resource – water – among cattle and five dominant herbivore species in an East African tropical savanna. 
We found that due to their high parasite output, water dependence, and parasite-sharing capacity, cattle greatly increased potential parasite exposures at water sources for wild ruminants. When untreated for parasites, cattle accounted for over two-thirds of total potential exposures around water fo..., , , # Dataset for Cattle aggregations at shared resources create potential parasite exposure hotspots for wildlife

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.vdncjsz28](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.vdncjsz28)

These data accompany the publication \"Cattle aggregations at shared resources create potential parasite exposure hotspots for wildlife\" in *Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences* (doi: 10.1098/rspb.2023-2239).

## Description of the data and file structure

The data include three data files and code to replicate results of the publication. Specifically, the data files are:

1. 1) fec\_data.csv: A dataframe containing parasite fecal egg count values for focal species in the study.
2. 2) parasite\_risk\_at\_water.csv: A dataframe containing information on parasite exposure estimates for different species over the study period. Columns are as follows:
1. Period: The dung survey period (numbered based on number of months elapsed).
2. Date: The initial survey date.
3. ...