Flick SMART multi-catch rodent station and bait station data sets: Council of the city of Sydney, October 2019 to July 2020

<p>Shortly after the enactment of preventative measures aimed at limiting the spread of COVID-19, local governments and public health authorities around the world reported an increased sighting of rats. We combined multi-catch rodent station data, rodent bait stations data, and rodent-related residents' complaints data to explore the effects that social distancing and lockdown measures might have had on the rodent population within the City of Sydney, Australia. We found that rodent captures, activity, and rodent related residents' complaints increased during the COVID-19 related lockdown period, followed by a steep decline post-lockdown. We found no changes in the geographical distribution of any of our indices of rodent abundance. We hypothesize that lockdown measures resulted in an increase in rodent activity driven by a reduction in human-derived food resources. This might have increased the mortality rate triggering a population crash. There is a high chance that the surviving individuals might be rodenticide resistant. It is possible that the onset of COVID-19 might have disrupted commensal rodent populations, with profound implications for the future management of these species. Here we make available multi-catch rodent station data and rodent bait stations data. We do not include rodent-related residents' complaints data due to potential identifier data that could be seen as a breach of private information sharing.</p>