Data for: Nonrandom foraging and resource distributions

Nonrandom foraging can cause animals to aggregate in resource-dense areas,
increasing host density, contact rates, and pathogen transmission, but
when should nonrandom foraging and resource distributions also have
density-independent effects? Here, we used a factorial experiment with
constant resource and host densities to quantify host contact rates across
seven resource distributions. We also used an agent-based model to compare
pathogen transmission when host movement was based on random foraging,
optimal foraging, or something between those states. Nonrandom foraging
strongly depressed contact rates and transmission relative to the classic
random movement assumptions used in most epidemiological models. Given
nonrandom foraging in the ABM and experiment, contact rates and
transmission increased with resource aggregation and average distance to
resource patches due to increased host movement in search of resources.
Overall, we describe three density-independent mechanisms by which host
behavior and resource distributions alter contact rate functions and
pathogen transmission.