Plains zebra time budgets, social behavior, and communication during the 2021-2022 Laikipia-Samburu ecosystem drought

Anthropogenically induced climate change has significantly increased the
frequency of acute weather events, such as drought. As human activities
amplify environmental stresses, animals may be forced to prioritize
survival over behaviors less crucial to immediate fitness, such as
socializing. Yet, social bonds may also buffer organisms from the
deleterious effects of environmental conditions. We investigated how the
highly social plains zebra (Equus quagga) modify their activity budgets,
social networks, and multimodal communication during a drought. This
dataset contains a) activity budget, b) steps per minute as a proxy for
foraging effort, c) nearest neighbor association data, d) interaction
rate, e) juvenile social interaction partner data, and f) multimodal
communication data.

人为诱导的气候变化（anthropogenically induced climate change）已显著提升了干旱等极端天气事件的发生频率。随着人类活动加剧环境压力，动物可能被迫将生存置于优先地位，而放弃那些对当下适合度（fitness）并非至关重要的行为，例如社交活动。然而，社会联结也可为生物体缓冲环境条件带来的有害影响。本研究探究了高度社会化的平原斑马（Equus quagga）在干旱期间如何调整其活动时间分配、社交网络以及多模态通讯行为。本数据集包含以下六类内容：a) 活动时间分配数据；b) 以每分钟步数作为觅食投入替代指标的相关数据；c) 近邻关联数据；d) 互动频率数据；e) 幼年个体社交互动伙伴数据；f) 多模态通讯数据。