Bear in mind! Bear presence and individual experience with calf survival shape the selection of calving sites in a long-lived solitary ungulate

The careful selection of ungulate calving sites to improve offspring survival is vital in the face of predation. In general, there is limited knowledge to which degree predator presence and prey’s individual experience shape the selection of calving sites. Predator presence influences the spatiotemporal risk of encountering a predator, while individual experiences with previous predation events shape perceived mortality risks. We used a multi-year movement dataset of a long-lived female ungulate (moose, Alces alces, n=79) and associated calf survival to test how predator presence (i.e. encounter risk) and females’ individual experiences with previous calf mortality events affected their calving site selection and site fidelity. Using data from areas with and without Scandinavian brown bear (Ursus arctos) predation, we compared females’ calving site selection using individual-based analyses. Our findings suggest two things. First, bear presence influences calving site selection in this s..., Female moose were immobilized with a CO2-powered dart gun (DANiNJECT, Kolding, Denmark) from a helicopter with a mixture of etorphine-acepromazine-xylazine or etorphine-xylazine (Evans et al., 2012; Græsli et al., 2020; Kreeger & Arnemo, 2007; Lian et al., 2014). Each female was equipped with a neck collar with a global positioning system (GPS) device, including a very high frequency (VHF) transmitter, a global system for mobile (GSM) communication, an ambient temperature recorder, and an acceleration sensor to monitor their movement over time (Vectronic Aerospace GmbH, Berlin, Germany, 2022). Using the GSM network or satellite, the tracking device sends continuous positions to the existing database Wireless Remote Animal Monitoring (WRAM; Dettki et al., 2014), which allows us to monitor females remotely in near real-time. The GPS provided half-hourly locations of the moose females, which we resampled for the habitat selection analysis to four times a day (00.00h, 06.00h, 12.00h, an..., , # **Bear in mind! Bear presence and individual experience with calf survival shape the selection of calving sites in a long-lived solitary ungulate**

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.m0cfxpp9t](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.m0cfxpp9t)

## SHARING/ACCESS INFORMATION

Recommended citation for this dataset: Dijkgraaf, L, Fredrik Stenbacka, Joris PGM Cromsigt, Göran Ericsson, Wiebke Neumann. (XXXX). Data from: Bear in mind! Bear presence and individual experience with calf survival shape the selection of calving sites in a long-lived solitary ungulate. Dryad Digital Repository. XXXX

## DATA & FILE OVERVIEW

**DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR:** Dijkgraaf_et_al_DataRcode_EcolEvol
Missing data codes: n/a (data not missing per se, but not present in that specific dataset)

### Habitat selection

1\. Number of variables: 15

2\. Number of cases/rows: 108,858

3\. Variable List:

* **anim_id1**: identifier for a given moose **(categorical)**
* **yrMooseID1**: identifier for a given moose in...