Mechanistic Home Range Analysis. (MPB-43)

Description

Spatial patterns of movement are fundamental to the ecology of animal populations, influencing their social organization, mating systems, demography, and the spatial distribution of prey and competitors. However, our ability to understand the causes and consequences of animal home range patterns has been limited by the descriptive nature of the statistical models used to analyze them. In Mechanistic Home Range Analysis, Paul Moorcroft and Mark Lewis develop a radically new framework for studying animal home range patterns based on the analysis of correlated random work models for individual movement behavior. They use this framework to develop a series of mechanistic home range models for carnivore populations. The authors' analysis illustrates how, in contrast to traditional statistical home range models that merely describe pattern, mechanistic home range models can be used to discover the underlying ecological determinants of home range patterns observed in populations, make accurate predictions about how spatial distributions of home ranges will change following environmental or demographic disturbance, and analyze the functional significance of the movement strategies of individuals that give rise to observed patterns of space use. By providing researchers and graduate students of ecology and wildlife biology with a more illuminating way to analyze animal movement, Mechanistic Home Range Analysis will be an indispensable reference for years to come.

Paul R. Moorcroft is Associate Professor of Biology at Harvard University. Mark A. Lewis is Professor of Mathematics and Biology at the University of Alberta, where he holds a Senior Canada Research Chair in Mathematical Biology.

"Mechanistic Home Range Analysis will be the reference book for quantifying animal movement in general for some years to come. Moorcroft and Lewis extend the basic concepts and mathematical models of the mid-1990s for animal movement, group behavior, and group predator-prey survival in major ways to new and interesting situations. They also bring to their modeling and analyses more accurate data obtained from recently improved systems of tracking animals in the wild."-J. D. Murray, University of Oxford and University of Washington "This book greatly advances our rather simple and descriptive view of animal home ranges. It will have a profound effect on the analysis of animal movement data."-Joshua J. Millspaugh, University of Missouri