badger_energy {ecoteach}R Documentation

European badger energy expenditure and tuberculosis infection data

Description

This dataset contains measurements of daily energy expenditure (DEE) and related variables for European badgers (Meles meles) in relation to their tuberculosis (TB) infection status. The data were collected to examine how disease status and other factors like season, group size, sex, age, and body mass affect energy balance in wild badgers. Some individuals were measured multiple times across different seasons.

Usage

badger_energy

Format

A data frame with 56 rows and 7 variables:

ID

Unique identifier for each badger

age

Age class of the badger: "cub" or "adult"

sex

Sex of the badger: "F" (female) or "M" (male)

group_size

Number of badgers in the social group

body_mass

Body mass in kilograms (kg)

daily_energy

Daily energy expenditure (DEE) in kilojoules per day (kJ/day)

season

Season when measurements were taken: "Winter", "Spring", "Summer", or "Autumn"

disease

Tuberculosis infection status: "Negative", "Diseased", or "Exposed"

Source

Barbour, Katie and McClune, David W. and Delahay, Richard J. and Speakman, John R. and McGowan, Natasha E. and Kostka, Berit and Montgomery, Ian W. and Marks, Nikki J. and Scantlebury, David M. (2019). Data from: No energetic cost of tuberculosis infection in European badgers (Meles meles). Dryad Digital Repository. doi:10.5061/DRYAD.MN84H20

Examples


# Load the dataset
data(badger_energy)

# Basic exploration
head(badger_energy)
summary(badger_energy)

# Compare energy expenditure by disease status
boxplot(daily_energy ~ disease, data = badger_energy, 
        main = "Daily Energy Expenditure by TB Status",
        ylab = "DEE (kJ/day)", xlab = "TB Status")
        
# Examine relationship between body mass and energy expenditure
plot(daily_energy ~ body_mass, data = badger_energy,
     col = as.numeric(disease), pch = 16,
     main = "Energy Expenditure vs Body Mass",
     xlab = "Body Mass (kg)", ylab = "DEE (kJ/day)")
legend("topright", levels(badger_energy$disease), 
       col = 1:3, pch = 16)


[Package ecoteach version 0.1.0 Index]