Temperature-related differences in hair cortisol among outdoor-housed Rhesus Macaques (Macaca mulatta)

Temperature has a known potential to influence glucocorticoid concentrations obtained from fecal samples in nonhuman primates. Studies reliant on hair cortisol estimates obtained using samples from outdoor subjects, however, may not control for temperature. This omission is despite the general utility of hair as a sample matrix with relatively longer periods of accrual time. We examined these dynamics in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta); importantly, this population of rhesus macaques exhibits covariation between season and breeding behavior. Thus, we also examined temperature relative to contributions of social behavior associated with breeding seasons, which may coincide with climatic shifts. We utilized 1921 hair samples from 580 subjects across six large outdoor‐housed mixed‐sex groups at the California National Primate Research Center to quantify the capacity for warmer or cooler outdoor temperatures to influence hair cortisol concentrations. We found that colder maximum temperatur..., Hair cortisol values sampled from six groups of outdoor-housed rhesus macaques., , # Data from: Temperature-related differences in hair cortisol among outdoor-housed Rhesus Macaques (Macaca mulatta)

Alexander J. Pritchard 1,2*, Rosemary A. Blersch 1,2, Brenda McCowan 1,2, Jessica J. Vandeleest 1,2

1 California National Primate Research Center, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA

2 Department of Population Health & Reproduction, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.j3tx95xp2](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.j3tx95xp2)

## Description of the data and file structure

Data are contained within two *.rds files (Pritchard-et-al_HairCortData.rds; Pritchard-et-al_HairCortData_wBehavior.rds), accessible through the R programming language. Opened within R, these files contain the data necessary for the relevant paper's analyses.

**For Pritchard-et-al_HairCortData.rds**, the dataframe contains 8 columns.

**animid:** subject animal ID codes, from 1:N, where N is the total number of study subjec...,