IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecomod/v224y2012i1p48-53.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

An individual-based quantitative approach for delineating core areas of animal space use

Author

Listed:
  • Vander Wal, E.
  • Rodgers, A.R.

Abstract

Core areas are often employed in space-use studies to emphasize sections of a home range where an animal supposedly concentrates its time spent (i.e., areas of intense use). The area designated as the core is often subjectively selected based on aggregations of animal locations, thus not quantitatively repeatable, or selected based on arbitrary areas from a home range estimator, thus not biologically significant. We present an explicit ecological model of space use for objectively delineating areas of intense use, or core areas, based on further refining the definition of core area as the area within which an animal spends a maximum amount of time. Core areas were delineated using a time-maximizing function derived from kernel analyses. Essentially, we plotted utilization distribution area against volume and determined the point at which the slope of the line fitted to the data is equal to 1; this point represents a threshold where the proportional home range area begins to increase at a greater rate than the probability of use and the corresponding isopleth value defines the boundary of the core area; an animal's time spent within this area is maximized relative to the periphery. We used summer locations from 60 adult female moose (Alces alces) to demonstrate our method. Moose core areas were bounded by the x¯=58% (SD=0.60) isopleth and comprised x¯=77% (SD=6.09) of animal relocations. Core areas represented x¯=27% (SD=1.99) of the home range (x¯=3837ha, SD=4336.15; 95% utilization distribution) and were used an average of 2.16 (SD=0.20) times more intensely than home range peripheries. Proportions of intensively used areas, as defined by isopleth values, were not related to home range size. Our technique reflects a biological understanding of a core area and provides a repeatable, quantitative method that enables statistical testing of hypotheses related to the effects of environmental factors on home range and core area size and usage. Adopting our approach will greatly improve our capacity to understand and ability to compare spatial dynamics of resource selection within home ranges of wildlife.

Suggested Citation

  • Vander Wal, E. & Rodgers, A.R., 2012. "An individual-based quantitative approach for delineating core areas of animal space use," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 224(1), pages 48-53.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecomod:v:224:y:2012:i:1:p:48-53
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2011.10.006
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304380011004911
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2011.10.006?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Weckel, Mark & Rockwell, Robert F., 2013. "Can controlled bow hunts reduce overabundant white-tailed deer populations in suburban ecosystems?," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 250(C), pages 143-154.
    2. Mohammad S Farhadinia & Paul J Johnson & David W Macdonald & Luke T B Hunter, 2018. "Anchoring and adjusting amidst humans: Ranging behavior of Persian leopards along the Iran-Turkmenistan borderland," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(5), pages 1-15, May.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecomod:v:224:y:2012:i:1:p:48-53. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/ecological-modelling .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.