Fine-scale habitat selection limits trade-offs between foraging and temperature in a grassland bird
Creators
- 1. Oklahoma State University
- 2. North Dakota State University
- 3. El Coyote Ranch*
Description
Notes
The data is organized into three csv files with a file for the vegetation data, thermal, data, and invertebrate data.
All three files have several columns in common that allow users to relate vegetation, thermal and invert data across files.
All three files have a location.type column indicating if the location corresponds to a brooding hen (Brood), non-brooding hen (Adult), or random location (random). The column Location.type2 divides these point types further into prairie-chicken locations recorded during the morning active period (Brood.AM, Adult.AM), prairie-chicken locations recorded in the afternoon refuge period (Brood.PM, Adult.PM) or a random location in each of the three time since fire classes (0=random location in patches 0-12 months post fire, 1=random location in patches 13-24 months post-fire, 2=random locations >24 months post fire).
Sample.period indicates if the data was recorded in the morning sampling period (AM) or afternoon sample period (PM).
The columns band.random and chicken.date indicate different sampling clusters (sets of four telemetry locations or four random locations). Each band.random/chicken.date combination will have four values in the chicken.time column that indicates which sample location from the sample cluster the data belongs to. For prairie-chicken locations these values in the chicken.time column also indicate the approximate time the GPS location was recorded, but for random locations these values are randomly assigned.
For the vegetation data unique combinations for quadrant and port indicates unique sample points at a sample location. For each location there should be 5 values in quadrant (center, NW, NE, SW, SE), that have a corresponding value for port that indicates one of two points in a quadrant. Vegetation data is found in columns K:T. Grasslike=% cover of grass, Forb=%cover of forbs, litter=% cover of Litter, bare=% cover of bare ground, and shrub=% cover of shrubs. All cover classes are shown as the midpoint of Daubenmire cover classes (0-5% cover, 6-25% cover, 26-50% cover, 51-75% cover, 76-95% cover, 96-100% cover). Litter.Depth is measured in centimeters 5 cm west of the sample location. Veg.Height.Frame is the height of the tallest vegetation it the point. Nudds.average is the average of the four Nudds board readings at a site, and is measured in decimeters.
In the thermal file each band.random/chicken.date/chicken.time combination will have an hourly black bulb reading (hourly mean;degrees celcius). The hourly mean is the average of all nine blackbulb sensors at a location for each hour. Thermal data was only recorded for four hours during either the morning (AM) or afternoon (PM) sample period. A corresponding air temperature (degrees Celcius) and solar radiation (watts/meter-squared) value were recorded by an onsite mesonet weather station.
The invertebrate datasheet shows the invertebrates collected at each location. Similar to other files band.random/chicken.date/chicken.time combinations indicate individual sample locations. Within each sample location there are were two transects (Transect =E-W or N-S). For each transect, we identified invertebrates by order and size class, and recorded count (Count) and biomass (Invert Weight [grams]) of each order/size class combination. Size.class is broken into 5mm size categories (0-5mm, 6-10 mm, 11-15 mm, 16-20 mm, 21-25mm >25 mm). Categories in size class is prefixed with sc. to prevent excel from converting to date format, this can be removed when working in R or other programs. Bug.Sample.Time indicates the actual time of day the samples were collected.