Odour information enables patch choice by mammalian herbivores from afar, leading to predictable plant associational effects

Neighbouring plants can alter the susceptibility of high-quality focal plants to herbivores by affecting herbivore patch choice. Herbivores can use plant odour to make patch-scale foraging decisions from afar, but the actual information they rely on within complex plant odours is rarely defined. Revealing the information enabling patch choice by herbivores will provide the mechanistic link underpinning associational effects of plant neighbours arising from these foraging decisions. Here, our first aim was to test whether odour cues alone enable a mammalian herbivore to make patch choice decisions leading to predictable associational effects of neighbours on high-quality focal plants. Our second aim was then to test whether artificial odour, designed to mimic the informative odour component within the whole odour profile of low-quality neighbours, is as effective as real plants in influencing patch choice and associational refuge. We tested patch choice by African elephants, Loxodonta af..., , , # Odour information enables patch choice by mammalian herbivores from afar, leading to predictable plant associational effects

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.2jm63xszw](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.2jm63xszw)

## Description of the data and file structure

This data was collected though running a number of African elephant 'walk throughs' of a giant Y-maze where each elephant (n = 6) was offered a binary choice of one plant patch, or another. Complete methods and replication can be found in the paper.

### Files and variables

#### ALL FILES:

**Description:** 

##### Variables

* ORDER: To re-order the spreadsheet
* DATE: Date that the walk through occured
* DAY: How many days into the trial
* TIME: Whether the walk through was conducted in the morning (AM), or afternoon (PM)
* TREATMENT: Treatment ID - written out clearly
* SETNO: Seperating out each walk through 'set' where each of the 6 elephants were trialled (i.e., Day 1, AM = set 1, Day 1, PM = set 2, etc.)
* PERIOD: Period wit...