ReadMe for “Accounting for behaviour in fine-scale habitat selection: a case study highlighting methodological intricacies” 
By LT Beumer, NMS Schmidt, J Pohle, J Signer, M Chimienti, JP Desforges, LH Hansen, SH Pedersen, DA Rudd, M Stelvig, FM van Beest

2023-06-18

This readme file describes the data files (4) accompanying the above publication. For further queries please contact ltbeumer@gmail.com

The following files are included:

1) "muskox_data_summer_behaviour_specific_availability_domain.txt”  
2) "muskox_data_summer_behaviour_unspecific_availability_domain.txt" 
3) “muskox_data_winter_behaviour_specific_availability_domain.txt”
4) “muskox_data_winter_behaviour_unspecific_availability_domain.txt”

Combined, these datasets include data collected by GPS collars fitted on 19 female muskoxen in northeast Greenland (28 muskox-years with 153-1062 observation days/animal). Data are provided as prepared for the step-selection analyses, i.e., including a behavioural classification and both used as well as available steps (for a description of cleaning procedures and the behavioural classification using hidden Markov models, see article). Available steps were derived with either a behaviour-specific or behaviour-unspecific availability domain; for details, see article. The datasets include covariates included in the step-selection analyses, extracted per GPS location. 

For modelling purposes, all continuous, non-cyclical covariates were standardised to have zero mean and unit standard deviation to improve numerical stability of parameter estimation. This is indicated by “_scaled” in the column name. 

The datasets contain the following columns:

	•	"animal_season_id”: unique identifier for each individual seasonal track included in the model. For details, see the article. Naming (e.g. “4035_02_winter_201314”) follows the following convention: collarID_animalID_season_year/winter (e.g.”winter_201314” = winter 2013-2014, “summer_2013” = summer 2013). 
	•	“utm_northing” and “utm_easting”: coordinates of the GPS location in the projection WGS 84 / UTM zone 27N (CRS(“+proj=utm +zone=27 +datum=WGS84 +units=m +no_defs") 
	•	“year”, “month”, “day”, and “hour”: the year, month, day and hour of the GPS recording, respectively.  
	•	“step_id”: unique identifier for each stratum (incl. one used and five available steps)          
	•	“step_type”: used or available step
	•	“behaviour”: behaviour of the animal in the respective step, as inferred from a hidden Markov model (for details, see article)
	•	“snowdepth_unscaled”/“snowdepth_scaled”: snow depth (m) at the respective GPS location, derived from the snow-evolution modelling tool SnowModel (30 m spatial, 3 hourly temporal resolution; for details, see article)
	•	“ruggedness_unscaled”/“ruggedness_scaled”: terrain ruggedness index at the respective GPS location (derived from Digital Elevation Model at 30 m spatial resolution; for details, for details, see article and Table S3 in associated Supplementary Materials)
	•	"elevation_unscaled"/"elevation_scaled": elevation (m above sea level) at the respective GPS location (derived from Digital Elevation Model at 30 m spatial resolution; for details, see article and Table S3 in associated Supplementary Materials)
	•	“landcover”: landcover at the respective GPS location (either “unvegetated”, “sparse vegetation”, or “dense vegetation”; for details, see article and Table S1 in associated Supplementary Materials)