I'm not falling for that: Boldness and trappability of small mammals decline in urban reserves

We aimed to analyse the influence of urbanisation and environmental
variables (i.e., moonlight and temperature) on the activity levels,
boldness, and trappability of small mammals. We live-trapped small mammals
in five urban reserves, each paired with a natural forest counterpart
within Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, New South Wales, Australia. We
used Elliot traps paired with camera traps to observe the activity,
boldness, and trappability of small mammals. This dataset includes all the
tagged camera-trap captures, the curated CSV files obtained from the
images, as well as the data obtained from the captures in the Elliot
traps. We found that the activity of small mammals did not differ between
the forest and urban reserve sites. However, we found that the most active
species in urban reserves was the exotic Rattus rattus, whereas R.
fuscipes was the most active species in forest sites. We found that the
small mammals in the urban reserves were less bold and had lower
trappability than their forest counterparts. This could be explained by
the bait type, and/or traits of the small mammal species (mostly R.
rattus) that were dominant in the urban reserves. Environmental variables
(moonlight and temperature) did not vary substantially over the study
period and had no significant influence on small mammal activity or
trappability. This dataset could be reused in small mammal behavioural
studies.