Memory keeps you at home: a mechanistic model for home range emergence

Abstract

Despite its central place in animal ecology no general mechanistic movement model with an emergent home‐range pattern has yet been proposed. Random walk models, which are commonly used to model animal movement, show diffusion instead of a bounded home range and therefore require special modifications. Current approaches for mechanistic modeling of home ranges apply only to a limited set of taxa, namely territorial animals and/or central place foragers. In this paper we present a more general mechanistic movement model based on a biased correlated random walk, which shows the potential for home‐range behavior. The model is based on an animal tracking a dynamic resource landscape, using a biologically plausible two‐part memory system, i.e. a reference‐ and a working‐memory. Our results show that by adding these memory processes the random walker produces home‐range behavior as it gains experience, which also leads to more efficient resource use. Interestingly, home‐range patterns, which we assessed based on home‐range overlap and increase in area covered with time, require the combined action of both memory components to emerge. Our model has the potential to predict home‐range size and can be used for comparative analysis of the mechanisms shaping home‐range patterns.