Captures do not affect escape response to humans in Alpine marmot

Capture and manipulation are an integral part of wildlife research and management. These practices, however, can affect animals either directly or indirectly, and studies should generally evaluate the consequences of captures to ensure animal welfare and reduce sampling bias. Here, we investigated the indirect, behavioural effects of live-capture on escape response to humans in Alpine marmot Marmota marmota within the Stelvio National Park (central Italian Alps) over three seasons (2021- 2023). We used flight initiation distance (FID) as a measure of escape response and tested it in relation to capture status using linear mixed modelling. Captures did not have any detectable effect on escape response, and FID was best explained by covariates such as starting distance, distance to nearest burrow, current behaviour during the observation and year of observation. It might be that, in marmots, escape response to humans is a rather inert behaviour. As such, although we cannot rule out unmeas..., , , # Data from: Captures do not affect escape response to humans in Alpine marmot

In this publication, we investigated the indirect, behavioural effects of live-capture on escape response to humans in Alpine marmot Marmota marmota within the Stelvio National Park (central Italian Alps) over three seasons (2021- 2023). We used flight initiation distance (FID) as a measure of escape response and tested it in relation to capture status and factors related to FID using linear mixed modeling.

This README file describes the data accompanying the publication.

The dataset used for the final version of the manuscript is named \"Data_Giari.et.al.2024.Wildlife.Biology2.csv\".

Files descriptions:

Data_Giari.et.al.2024.Wildlife.Biology2.csv: This file contains all the data on the FID test carried out during 2021, 2022 and 2023 seasons in the Stelvio National. The dataset contains all the information required for the statistical analysis. Following are the definitions of the terms and abbreviations u...