Animal Space Use

In an upcoming paper I explore the intrinsic network topology of individual space use, under the premises of site fidelity and multi-scaled habitat use. In short – the process that leads to the emergence of a home range. The illustration below provides a glimpse into this inner structure of nodes (re-visited locations), their respective statistical weight (how often they have been re-visited) and how they are inter-connected. Inter-connectivity describes how some nodes are more closely linked (showing a higher frequency of inter-node commuting) than other nodes. Thus, the inter-node distance in these graphs are expressing the relative degree of connectivity, and not the actual spatial distance between the nodes. For example, two nodes that are close in topological terms – neighbour nodes in the graph to the left – may in fact happen to be distant in space. The most intriguing aspect of the two graphs above regards how the topology matures over time. In the early phase after

For the first time three directions of animal space use research are unified into a common conceptual model: a three-dimensional biophysical continuum, involving (1) spatial memory, (2) temporal memory, and (3) the animal’s hierarchical perception of the environment. The model is described in detail in Chapter 7 of my book. The spatial memory aspect regards the degree of memory map utilization. The temporal memory aspect regards degree of mixture of high and low frequency of locomotion, like the classic ARS model (area-restricted search) and related kind of composite space use. Hierarchical processing regards simultaneous (in contrast to sequential!) mixture of tactics and strategy (Figure 70, page 197). The common theoretical framework for ecological research – providing the majority of models and statistical procedures – is located in the lower left corner, marked as BM/RW (Brownian motion, classic random walk).  Are you applying methods like the kernel density estimation or a