Movement of avian predators points to biodiversity hotspots in agricultural landscape

Global agricultural landscapes are witnessing a concerning decline in biodiversity, and this trend is predicted to persist. To safeguard these biodiversity-rich areas, it's crucial to pinpoint hotspots effectively. In doing so, we utilized various species of birds of prey as suitable sentinel animals due to their mobility and dependence on prey diversity and abundance. Between 2019 and 2021, we tracked 62 individuals from four predator species using GPS loggers in Estonian farmland. Dividing the study area into 50-meter grids and overlaying them with tracked individuals' locations enabled us to differentiate between hotspots of their activity and control sites. We conducted surveys on amphibians, birds, small mammals, and plant diversity to determine if avian predator activity hotspots correlated with overall biodiversity. Our findings revealed significantly higher diversity and abundance in the surveyed groups within activity hotspots compared to control sites. These hotspots continued..., GPS Telemetry Dataset
Starting from April 2019, we trapped individuals of four different species of birds of prey in their known breeding territories. We used large mistnets with stuffed specimens of large avian top predators (white-tailed eagle and eagle owl) to provoke the attack of the focal species near their nest sites and to catch them in the net. We managed to trap and track 62 individuals of four different species (Table S1). As much as 59 individuals were caught during this project, but we also used additional data from three lesser spotted eagles that were caught earlier in the same area and were still transmitting data (Väli et al., 2020).  
We used 15 – 30-g GPS-loggers with solar panels (Ornitela, Lithuania), which were selected according to the body mass of each studied bird so as not to exceed the 3% threshold that is currently considered as acceptable by many bioethics committees. GPS loggers were attached to birds as backpacks that were sewn at the sternum with Teflon r..., , # Movement of avian predators points to biodiversity hotspots in agricultural landscape

This dataset is linked to the original article by Paweł Mirski, Ülo Väli and co-authors under the same title as the dataset. The article can be found here:

Data was gathered in 2019-2021 in Tartu county, Estonia.

The dataset comprise of two parts: 1) GPS telemetry data on avian meso-predators movement in Estonian agricultural landscape near Tartu, 2) biodiversity survey results in hotspots of avian predators activity and in control sites.

Data curators are:

part 1) - Paweł Mirski, University of Białystok, [[e-mail]](mailto:p.mirski@uwb.e)

part 2) - Ülo Väli, Estonian University of Life Sciences, [[e-mail] ](mailto:ylo.vali@emu.e)

## Description of the data and file structure

For details, see the Methods chapter of the \"Movement of avian predators points to biodiversity hotspots in agricultural landscape\" article by Mirski et al.

Tab.1 Tracking data is comprised of follo...