Food-safety trade-offs drive dynamic behavioral antipredator responses among snowshoe hares

Prey adopt various antipredator responses to minimize the risk of predation; the fitness costs of antipredator responses can have emergent effects on the population dynamics of prey species. While the trade-off between food acquisition and predation avoidance has long been recognized in predicting antipredator responses, less attention has examined how the dynamics of the food-safety trade-off are driven by temporal variation in multiple risk factors under changing seasonal conditions. Here, we monitored foraging and vigilance behavior of a central prey species, snowshoe hares (Lepus americanus), at fine temporal scales over the winter with various types of predation risk, while also experimentally manipulating predation risk by attracting predators to foraging patches. Hares increased foraging and decreased vigilance over the winter, but hares under chronic risk decreased their antipredator efforts to a lesser degree, indicating that those individuals prioritized risk avoidance over fo..., Snowshoe hare foraging (by accelerometer collars) and vigilance data (by trail cameras) and predator detection data (by trail cameras) were collected in the Chequamegon National Forest Medford District (45.291° N, 90.517° W) in Wisconsin, USA, in winter 2022 and 2023. We obtained meteorological data including wind speed, cloud coverage and air temperature recorded every 20 minutes as a part of the Automated Surface Observing Systems (ASOS) at the nearest available weather station to the study area (located ~ 30 km away). Daily snow depth data were obtained from the nearest available weather station to the study area (located ~ 25 km away)., , # Data from: **Food-safety trade-offs drive dynamic behavioral antipredator responses among snowshoe hares**

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.dv41ns27d](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.dv41ns27d)

## Description of the data and file structure

Data were collected in the Chequamegon National Forest Medford District (45.291° N, 90.517° W) in Wisconsin, USA, in winter 2022 and 2023. This dataset consists of 4 data files (two predator detection data files, snowshoe hare foraging data file and snowshoe hare vigilance data file) and 1 R code, which are listed below with descriptions of the individual data files and variables in them. 

### Files and variables

#### File: Hare\_Night\_Vigilance\_JAE.csv

**Description:** Hare night vigilance data

##### Variables

“ID” = feeder ID, “patch” = patch ID, “trt” = treatment type of patch, “datetime” = date and time of detection (in CST), “date” = date, “sunrise” = sunrise time, “sunset” = sunset time, “dawn” = dawn time\", “dusk” = dusk time, “tod” = t...