Food for fitness? Insights from 24 Norwegian moose populations for proactive monitoring and preventing overabundance

Cervid (Cervidae) populations that are overabundant with respect to their food resources are expected to show declining physiological and reproductive fitness. A proactive solution to such declines is to integrate the monitoring of food resources with animal harvesting strategies, but there are few studies available to guide managers regarding which food resources to monitor and how to do so. In this study, we used a rare large data set that included detailed absolute measures of available food quantities and browsing intensity from field inventories, to test their relationship with fitness indices of moose Alces alces in 24 management units in four regions across Norway. The Dryad deposited dataset includes detailed data from these food inventories, and harvesting statistics from all the management units with a total of 250,710 moose seen, 32,756 moose shot, and 4,209 moose calves weighed. It also contains regional statistics on calves seen per cow during a total of 2,475,483 hunter 8-h days, and 34,532 moose calves weighed. Explanation of each data type is given alongside the data. Additional information on how the data was collected is found in the accompanying journal article.

相对于食物资源承载力而言种群过剩的鹿科（Cervidae）动物种群，其生理与繁殖适合度预计会出现下降。针对这类适合度衰退的主动应对方案，是将食物资源监测与野生动物狩猎策略相结合，但目前鲜有研究能够为管理者提供明确指导，以确定应监测哪些食物资源及具体监测方法。

本研究采用一套极为罕见的大型数据集，该数据集包含野外调查获取的可利用食物量与取食强度的详细实测数据，以此检验挪威4个区域共24个管理单元内驼鹿（Alces alces）的适合度指标与上述二者的关联关系。

本研究提交至Dryad的数据集包含上述食物调查的详细数据，以及所有管理单元的狩猎统计信息：累计记录250,710头驼鹿观测个体、32,756头被猎杀的驼鹿，以及4,209头驼鹿幼崽的称重数据。

该数据集还涵盖区域统计数据，包括总计2,475,483个猎人8小时调查日内记录的每头母驼鹿对应幼崽观测数，以及34,532头驼鹿幼崽的称重数据。

各数据类型的说明已随数据集一并提供。关于数据采集的更多细节，可参阅随附的期刊论文。