A year-long camera-trap dataset for assessing spatial occurrence and diel activity of sympatric ungulates in South Korea

Understanding how ecologically similar species share space and time is central to community ecology and can provide information for conservation and management in multi-species systems. Camera-trap data provide a practical means of describing spatial co-occurrence and diel activity overlap amongst sympatric mammals, particularly where direct mechanistic inference is not possible from observational data alone. In human-dominated landscapes, standardised, open-access occurrence data are critical for balancing the conservation of endangered species with the management of over-abundant, conflict-prone wildlife.

In this study, we present a curated, year-long camera-trap dataset for four sympatric ungulates in South Korea, based on monitoring conducted in a temperate forest landscape in Uljin County, together with station-level covariates and harmonised effort information derived from a camera operation log. We provide example analyses illustrating: (i) spatial occurrence patterns using species-wise occupancy models and (ii) diel activity and temporal overlap using non-parametric activity analyses. For the temporal example, overlap is summarised using local clock time (Asia/Seoul, UTC+09:00) and complemented by a photoperiod-adjusted (solar-time) sensitivity analysis, based on sunrise and sunset times calculated for site-level representative coordinates (one point per site; UJ1 and UJ2). Diel-period summaries are additionally reported as rate-normalised detections (detections per 100 hours) using civil-twilight definitions to account for unequal period durations. The released dataset contains 4,623 independent detection events for the four ungulate species (long-tailed goral: 2,317; water deer: 814; Siberian roe deer: 808; wild boar: 684) recorded at 82 camera stations between April 2022 and May 2023. Survey effort totalled 29,850 functional camera-trap nights (30,410 scheduled nights, including 560 inactive nights from recorded downtime). All released files are listed in the Data resources section and include event-level records, station-level covariates, generalised coordinates and effort summaries to support reproducible reuse.