Data for: Nonrandom foraging and resource distributions

Nonrandom foraging can cause animals to aggregate in resource-dense areas, increasing host density, contact rates, and pathogen transmission, but when should nonrandom foraging and resource distributions also have density-independent effects? Here, we used a factorial experiment with constant resource and host densities to quantify host contact rates across seven resource distributions. We also used an agent-based model to compare pathogen transmission when host movement was based on random foraging, optimal foraging, or something between those states. Nonrandom foraging strongly depressed contact rates and transmission relative to the classic random movement assumptions used in most epidemiological models. Given nonrandom foraging in the ABM and experiment, contact rates and transmission increased with resource aggregation and average distance to resource patches due to increased host movement in search of resources. Overall, we describe three density-independent mechanisms by which ho..., To understand how resource distributions influenced host contacts, we performed an 8x7 factorial microcosm experiment that varied snail density (2,4,6,8,10,12,14, or 16 snails) and periphyton resource distributions (ranging from uniformly distributed to completely clustered). Periphyton was grown on tiles and arranging these tiles along with empty tiles allowed for the creation of different resource distributions in the microcosm. In each of the microcosm experiments, snails were uniquely colored and visually observed for 45 minutes. During that 45 minutes, all snail contacts, durations of those contacts, number of patches visited, and durations of those visits were recorded. Each treatment was replicated twice and all treatments were videoed to be able to check observations. An agent-based model (ABM), described in the attached Metadata file, was built based on the microcosm experiments and used to examine how host foraging behavior and resource distribution influence host contact rate..., , # Nonrandom foraging and resource distributions Data This file describes the six datasets, three R scripts, and the NetLogo agent-based model (ABM) code used to run the analysis for “Nonrandom foraging and resource distributions affect the relationships between host density, contact rates, and parasite transmission”. NetLogo was run using version 6.1.1 and R version 4.0.0 was used to analyze all the data. All R scripts and NetLogo code can be found at:  All Data used in the final publication, along with R scripts and NetLogo files can be found at: **Authors**: Zachary Gajewski1, Philip McEmurray2,3, Jeremy Wojdak4, Cari McGregor4, Lily Zeller1, Hannah Cooper1, Lisa K. Belden2, Skylar Hopkins1 1. Department of Applied Ecology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 2. Department of Biological Sciences, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 3. Department of Anthropology, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO 4. Department of Biology, Radford University, Radford, VA...