Using global remote camera data of a solitary species complex to evaluate the drivers of group formation.

ABSTRACT: The social system of animals involves a complex interplay between physiology, natural history, and the environment. Long relied upon discrete categorizations of "social" and "solitary" inhibit our capacity to understand species and their interactions with the world around them. Here, we use a globally distributed camera trapping dataset to test the drivers of aggregating into groups in a species complex (martens and relatives, family Mustelidae, Order Carnivora) assumed to be obligately solitary. We use a simple quantification, the probability of being detected in a group, that was applied across our globally derived camera trap dataset. Using a series of binomial generalized mixed-effects models applied to a dataset of 16,483 independent detections across 17 countries on fou

SUBMITTER: Twining JP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10962950 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature