Abstract
The analysis of animal movement within different landscapes may increase our understanding of how landscape features affect the perceptual range of animals. Perceptual range is linked to movement probability of an animal via a dispersal kernel, the latter being generally considered as spatially invariant but could be spatially affected. We hypothesize that spatial plasticity of an animal's dispersal kernel could greatly modify its distribution in time and space. After radio tracking the movements of walking insects (Cosmopolites sordidus) in banana plantations, we considered the movements of individuals as states of a Markov chain whose transition probabilities depended on the habitat characteristics of current and target locations. Combining a likelihood procedure and pattern-oriented modelling, we tested the hypothesis that dispersal kernel depended on habitat features. Our results were consistent with the concept that animal dispersal kernel depends on habitat features. Recognizing the plasticity of animal movement probabilities will provide insight into landscape-level ecological processes.
Highlights
Animals generally combine a wide variety of chemical, visual, and acoustic cues to assess the suitability of habitats for providing food [1], oviposition sites [2], or protection from predators [3]
To assess whether and to what extent animal movement probability can be affected by spatial heterogeneity of habitats, we considered a data set of the locations of the insect Cosmopolites sordidus within heterogeneous environments [25]
We assumed that the daily decision to remain in a cell or move from a cell was independent of time but depended on the habitat quality of this cell and on the attractiveness and closeness of other cells. With this time-homogeneous Markovian hypothesis, we considered C. sordidus walks as a first-order Markov chain whose states corresponded to cell centres and whose transition probabilities were defined with a dispersal kernel fb(d)
Summary
Animals generally combine a wide variety of chemical, visual, and acoustic cues to assess the suitability of habitats for providing food [1], oviposition sites [2], or protection from predators [3]. The perceptual range of an animal, i.e., the spatial extent of the landscape for which information is available to drive decisions about movement, is a determinant of the dynamics and spatial distribution of animal populations [4]. An animal’s perceptual range is directly linked to landscape connectivity, and analysis of perceptual range can help researchers understand how populations respond to habitat disturbance and fragmentation [5]. Perceptual range is a key parameter of the probability that animals successfully disperse in a landscape, and of the existence and persistence of a fragmented population [6]. Perceptual abilities drive the foraging behaviour of predators with respect to a spatially and temporally varying distribution of prey [7] as well as the population dynamics of pests such as crickets [8]. Mechanisms of habitat selection by large mammals and birds are quite related to their perceptual ranges [9,10,11]
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