Does differential habitat selection facilitate coexistence between badgers and hedgehogs?

Predicting the spatial and temporal responses of species exhibiting intra-guild predation (IGP) relationships is difficult due to variation in potential interactions and environmental context. Eurasian badgers (Meles meles) are intra-guild predators of European hedgehogs (Erinaceus europaeus) and are implicated in their population decline via both direct predation and competition for shared food resources. Previous studies have shown spatial separation between these species and attributed this to hedgehogs experiencing a ‘landscape of fear’, but little is known about the potential role of differential habitat use.
We estimated the density and occupancy of both species at 22 rural study sites in England and Wales, to explore whether food availability, habitat, or the presence of badgers, explained hedgehog distributions. Hedgehog density varied significantly across major rural land uses, whereas badger density did not. Although both species co-existed at a regional (1 km²) scale, occupan..., We deployed 645 camera traps across the 22 sites (mean = 29 per site), stratified by five key habitat categories: arable, amenity grassland (including residential gardens), agricultural grassland, built environment (buildings and hardstanding) and woodland (deciduous and coniferous). Twenty two rural sites (0.4 – 1.3 km²) were surveyed for badgers and hedgehogs between April - September in 2018 or 2019 (Figure 1). Camera trapping was used to estimate focal species occupancy and density, and invertebrate sampling was used to obtain an index of prey availability for both species. Rural study sites comprising either arable-dominated, pasture-dominated (where a single habitat represented ≥66.7% of the total area of a site), or mixed farming habitat were selected (Table 1), as these were considered landscapes most likely to be occupied by badgers and hedgehogs (Judge et al., 2014; Williams et al., 2018)., , # Does differential habitat selection facilitate coexistence between badgers and hedgehogs?

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.sn02v6xfn](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.sn02v6xfn)

## Description of the data and file structure

Data relating to camera and invertebrate surveys that were conducted to investigate badger and hedgehog intraguild predation between April 2018 and September 2019.

Data and Scripts are stored in the zipped file 'Data_and_scripts_repository'

### Files and variables

#### File: Data\_and\_scripts\_repository.zip

A description of the folder structure and file contents is given below.

##### Activity: main folder containing data files and R scripts required to reproduce activity analysis for both study species; badger and hedgehog.

* badger_small.png – silhouette image of a badger used to produce figure 5.

- hog_badger_activity.csv – detection data after conversion to solar time.

* hog_small.png – silhouette image of a hedgehog used to produce figure 5.

- Rplot.pn...