Wild kangaroos become more social when caring for young and may maintain long-term affiliations with popular individuals

Kangaroos are an iconic group of Australian fauna. Despite considerable research on kangaroo behaviour, key gaps remain in our understanding of their social organization in the wild. In particular, it remains largely unknown whether kangaroos form long-term social bonds and what factors might prompt individuals to associate or dissociate from one another. Over 6 years, we monitored the social affiliations of individually identified eastern grey kangaroos, Macropus giganteus, in a large wild population. We investigated the short-term and long-term relationships of kangaroos and the extent those relationships varied with age, sex and reproductive state. We found evidence that long-term relationships among eastern grey kangaroos are possible, especially between adult females. Those individuals that were more sociable within years were also more likely to establish affiliations across years. Contrary to previous studies, we observed females actively associating with other mothers in the yea..., The study was based on identifying individual eastern grey kangaroos from high-resolution digital photographs. These were taken during a systematic annual survey of a wild population on private property near the locality of Wollar in the New South Wales Central Tablelands. This population ranged in size from 34 to 71 individuals. The photographic survey was conducted annually over six years (2015–2020) by the second author and at approximately the same time each year (see below for the exception). The survey was done in the Austral spring, except for 2016 when it took place in winter. Photos were taken using a 200mm lens on a Canon EOS 7D digital SLR from portable hides placed at least 12 hours prior to the first day of observation. The survey was conducted over two to three hours at dawn and again at dusk for three to four consecutive days.
This population of eastern grey kangaroos was particularly suited for this study because individuals rested during the day within a eucalypt woodla..., Data files can be accessed through Microsoft Excel., # Wild kangaroos become more social when caring for young and may maintain long-term affiliations with popular individuals

MS Authors: Campbell, Nora E; Ord, Terry J

## FILE NAME AND CONTENT

Campbell\_Ord\_data.xlsx

All data used in analyis of kangaroo social networks.

## FILE STRUCTURE AND UNITS OF MEASUREMENT

The file is a xlsx file that can be opened using any text, spreadsheet or statistical program.

## xlsx file column headings

Descriptions for the headings in the .xlsx file are given below.

### Roo

* The individual kangaroo, given by a number, predated by the sex/age it was last seen as. E.g. Roo f4 is kangaroo 004, who was last seen in 2020, identified as a female.

### sex

* The sex/age of the focal kangaroo in a given year. Females with and without young are categorised seperately.

### Date

* The date that the photograph used to identify the kangaroo was taken.

### Time

* The time that the photograph used to identify the kangaroo was taken.

### AM/PM

* The time...