Megafaunal rodents – behaviour and ecological roles of Southeast Asian forest porcupines

Porcupines are the megafauna of Southeast Asia’s rodent community and, as such, potentially perform important ecological roles in the rainforest habitats they are common in. We investigated four ecological roles of Malayan porcupines (Hystrix brachyura) and brush-tailed porcupines (Atherurus macrourus) within the Belum-Temenggor rainforest complex of Peninsular Malaysia. First, camera-traps placed at four Malayan porcupine and one brush-tailed porcupine burrow showed that the burrows were used in varying ways by at least 22 other animal species. These animals shared the burrow, or fed on insects at the entrance, or possibly investigated the burrows as predators. Second, seedling surveys on top of the burrows, suggested that burrows might also be good microsites for seedling establishment and growth (as found previously in arid and semi-arid habitats), with a higher species richness and density on the burrows than at control sites. Third, porcupines consumed 80 plant species (identified ..., , # Data from: Megafaunal rodents – behaviour and ecological roles of Southeast Asian forest porcupines Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.fbg79cp8h](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.fbg79cp8h) ## Description of the data and file structure GENERAL INFORMATION  Megafaunal rodents — behaviour and ecological roles of Southeast Asian forest porcupines  Four datasets are included documenting information gathered on Malayan (*Hystrix brachyura*) and Asiatic brush-tailed (*Atherurus macrourus*) porcupines from a field study in the Belum-Temenggor forest of Peninsular Malaysia. ### **Dataset 1: Porcupine_burrow_videos.xlsx** Contains information on all recordings of the two porcupine species at the burrow entrances during the study period. *Description of data columns:* Camera_ID: Code for location and camera number Date: Date porcupine was observed Start_time: Start time of video sequence for observation End_time: End time of video sequence for observation Video_count: Number of videos within...,