Glucocorticoids of European bison in relation to their status: age, dominance, social centrality and leadership

Dataset for the paper "Glucocorticoids of European bison in relation to their status: age, dominance, social centrality and leadership"

Stress is the body's response to cope with the environment and better survive. While some studies suggest that it would be more stressful to be the dominant of the group, others support the opposite hypothesis. Several variables can actually affect this relationship, or even cancel it. This study therefore aims to make the link between social status and the basal level of stress of 14 wild European bison (Bison bonasus) living together. We collected faeces and measured the faecal glucocorticoid metabolites (FGM), a proxy of stress. We showed that FGM is linked to different variables of social status of European bison, specifically age, dominance rank, eigenvector centrality but also to several variable interactions. Hence, glucocorticoids seem to be a mediator of social life of bison. Preferential leaders in bison, i.e. the older and more dominant individuals which are also the more central ones, are less stressed compared to other group members. Measurement of such variables could thus be a valuable tool to follow and improve the conservation of species.