Plains zebra time budgets, social behavior, and communication during the 2021-2022 Laikipia-Samburu ecosystem drought

Anthropogenically induced climate change has significantly increased the frequency of acute weather events, such as drought. As human activities amplify environmental stresses, animals may be forced to prioritize survival over behaviors less crucial to immediate fitness, such as socializing. Yet, social bonds may also buffer organisms from the deleterious effects of environmental conditions. We investigated how the highly social plains zebra (Equus quagga) modify their activity budgets, social networks, and multimodal communication during a drought. This dataset contains a) activity budget, b) steps per minute as a proxy for foraging effort, c) nearest neighbor association data, d) interaction rate, e) juvenile social interaction partner data, and f) multimodal communication data.