Neotropical mammal responses to forest fires in Serra do Amolar, Brazil

The increasing frequency and severity of human-caused fires likely have deleterious effects on species distribution and persistence. In 2020, megafires in the Brazilian Pantanal burned 43% of the biome’s unburned area and resulted in mass mortality of wildlife. We investigated changes in habitat use or occupancy for an assemblage of eight mammal species in Serra do Amolar, Brazil, following the 2020 fires using a pre- and post-fire camera trap dataset. Additionally, we estimated density for two naturally marked species, jaguars Panthera onca and ocelots Leopardus pardalis. Of the eight species, six (ocelots, collared peccaries Dicotyles tajacu, giant armadillos Priodontes maximus, Azara’s agouti Dasyprocta azarae, red brocket deer Mazama americana, and tapirs Tapirus terrestris) had declining occupancy following fires, and one had stable habitat use (pumas Puma concolor). Giant armadillo experienced the most precipitous decline in occupancy from 0.431 ± 0.171 to 0.077 ± 0.044 after the ..., We used camera traps (Bushnell 119876, Panthera V4 and Cuddeback 1279) to survey the study area in December 2019 (session 1; year 1 – pre-fires) and December 2020 (session 2, year 2 – 2 months post-fires). Due to logistical constraints, we installed cameras in February 2022 (session 3, year 3 – 15 months post-fires) for an average duration of 53 trap nights (range 1-136, see SI_1 for complete details). All three surveys took place in the rainy season. Thirty-five stations were active in session 1, 43 stations in session 2, and 31 stations in session 3. Cameras were placed at a distance of 1.5 ± .5 km between stations and were located in different land covers (primary, secondary and gallery forest, savannah). Minimum convex polygons for each survey were 189.68 km2 in year 1, 272.26 km2 in year 2, and 245.95 km2 in year 3. We placed double stations to enable photographing both sides of each passing individual, thus enabling identification for naturally marked species like jaguars and ocel..., , # Neotropical mammal responses to forest fires in Serra do Amolar, Brazil

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.p5hqbzkwt](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.p5hqbzkwt)

The data and scripts contained in this folder are from data collected by Instituto Homen Pantaneiro and Panthera collected between 2019-2021 in the Serra do Amolar, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil. The purpose of the study was to evaluate occupancy and density of mammal species before and after forest fires in 2020. These data and the attached scripts are from the article Bardales et al. (2024): DOI : 10.1111/gcb.17278.

## Description of the data and file structure

The data are detections (presence and absence) of eight mammal species in the Serra do Amolar for occupancy analysis and recaptures of jaguars and ocelots for density analysis.. The scripts attached are for dynamic occupancy models for three years of data and multi-year density for jaguars and ocelots.

List of files: 

**Dynamic occupancy (19 files total)**

* MS_Occupa...