American Black Bear Vital Rates and Diet Data from Island and Mainland Ecosystems

105 American black bears were sampled using stable isotope analysis (δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N) to estimate diet proportions. The dataset, created by Monica Cooper and last updated in May 2026, compares bear vital rates between a protected island ecosystem and a mainland area with human food subsidies. It includes R code, CSV data, and TIF landcover files totaling 1.6 MB.

Use Cases

• Modeling population growth rates based on apparent survival and recruitment data.
• Analyzing the influence of human food subsidies on bear diet composition using stable isotope values.
• Investigating correlations between landcover types in bear use areas and dietary proportions.
• Comparing vital rates and mortality risks between protected and human-influenced ecosystems.

Strengths

• Diet estimates for 105 individual bears provide a substantive sample size.
• Data includes multiple file types (CSV, R, TIF, RMD) supporting reproducible analysis.
• Explicit comparison between two distinct ecosystem types (protected island vs. anthropogenic mainland).

Limitations

• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.

Provenance

Source

figshare

Collection Method

Data gathered via stable isotope analysis (δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N) of bear samples and estimation of vital rates.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-01 20:19:15; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Likely covers a protected island ecosystem and a neighboring mainland area in North America, given the species studied.