Data from: Predator activity and scent cues influence white-tailed deer behavior in a multi-predator landscape

When navigating landscapes, prey make decisions that balance their need to
acquire high-quality resources with the risk of predation. When risk is
heterogenous across the landscape, prey can alter their habitat use to
avoid high-risk patches, or they can employ behavioral modifications, such
as shifting their temporal activity, that allow them to continue to use
high-risk patches while offsetting risk. Our objective was to discern how
white-tailed deer in a predator-rich environment (the Greater Yellowstone
Ecosystem [GYE]) and an environment containing only mesopredators (Ohio,
USA) respond to predator urine cues and predator activity. We used camera
traps to quantify the spatiotemporal activity of deer before, during, and
after applying predator-scent cues (control/water, wolf urine, mountain
lion urine, and coyote urine). In the GYE, deer decreased diurnal activity
in response to all predator-scent cues, and increased nocturnal activity
in response to wolf, mountain lion, and control scents. Deer also
spatially avoided the physical presence of grizzly bears and temporally
aligned their activity patterns with bears as bear detections increased
over time. In Ohio, deer did not alter their spatial or temporal activity
in response to predator-scent cues, and we found that deer activity was
positively associated with coyote activity, thereby suggesting that deer
may be naïve to the predator-scent cues in this region. Our study shows
that scent cues alone do not alter the spatial activity of deer, but in
regions where deer are not naïve to the risk of predation, they may
exhibit changes in their temporal activity.