Data for: Effects of landcover on mesocarnivore density along an urban to rural gradient

Human development has major implications for wildlife populations. Urban-exploiter species can benefit from human subsidized resources, whereas urban-avoider species can vanish from wildlife communities in highly developed areas. Therefore, understanding how the density of different species varies in response to landcover changes associated with human development can provide important insight into how wildlife communities are likely to change and provide a starting point for predicting the consequences of those changes. Here, we estimated the population density of five common mesocarnivore species (coyote (Canis latrans), bobcat (Lynx rufus), red fox (Vulpes vulpes), raccoon (Procyon lotor), and Virginia opossum (Didelphis virginiana)) along an urban to rural gradient in the greater Fayetteville Area, Northwest Arkansas, USA between November 2021, and March 2022. At each study site, we applied the Random Encounter Model (REM) to data from motion-triggered cameras to calculate the densit..., This data was collected through camera traps set between November 1, 2021, and March 14, 2022. Cameras were set at 12 study sites in the Ozark Mountain Ecoregion, Northwest Arkansas, USA. Sites were chosen to represent a continuum of human activity and ranged from 2km to 60km from downtown Fayetteville, Arkansas. Camera trap images were sorted using Timelapse 2.0 software. Detections were sorted into 5-minute \"episodes\", and each episode was treated as a single detection to avoid double counting individuals. 
To estimate the density (D) of our five focal species from game camera detections, we applied the Random Encounter Model (REM) equation, where y refers to the total detections of each animal per camera, and t is the total trap nights in hours (measure of trapping effort). V is the day range of each species, referring to how far an animal travels in a 24-hour period. We used published day range estimates for each species and used the median day range value for each species from all ..., R programming and the “lme4” and “AICcmodavg” packages
Microsoft Excel
Timelapse 2.0
ArcGIS Pro (ArcGIS Pro 2.8.3, 2021; Esri Inc, Redlands, CA)