Potts, J.R. orcid.org/0000-0002-8564-2904, Börger, L., Strickland, B.K. et al. (1 more author) (2022) Assessing the predictive power of step selection functions: how social and environmental interactions affect animal space use. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 13 (8). pp. 1805-1818. ISSN 2041-210X
Abstract
1. The ability to predict animal space use patterns is a fundamental concern in changing environments. Such predictions require a detailed understanding of the movement mechanisms from which spatial distributions emerge. However, these are typically complex, multifaceted, and therefore difficult to uncover.
2. Here, we provide a methodological framework for uncovering the movement mechanisms necessary for building predictive models of animal space use. Our procedure begins by parametrising a movement model of each individual in a population using step selection analysis, from which we build an individual-based model (IBM) of interacting individuals, derive predicted broad-scale space use patterns from the IBM and then compare the predicted and empirical patterns. Importantly, discrepancies between these predicted and empirical patterns are used to formulate new hypotheses about the drivers of animal movement decisions and thus iteratively improve the model's predictive power. We demonstrate our method on a population of feral pigs in Mississippi, USA.
3. Our technique incorporates both social interactions between individuals and environmental drivers of movement. At each iteration of model construction, we were able to identify missing features to improve model prediction by analysing the IBM output. These include overuse-avoidance effects of self-attractive mechanisms (i.e. attraction to previously visited sites becomes repulsion if there have been multiple visits in quick succession), which were vital for ensuring predicted occurrence distributions do not become vanishingly small.
4. Overall, we have provided a general method for iteratively improving the predictive power of step selection models. This will enable future researchers to maximise the information obtained from step selection analyses and to highlight potentially missing data for uncovering the drivers of movement decisions and emergent space use patterns. Ultimately, this provides a fundamental step towards the general aim of constructing predictive models of animal space use.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2022 The Authors. Methods in Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | animal movement; home range; individual-based model; movement ecology; resource selection; spatial ecology; step selection; utilisation distribution |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > School of Mathematics and Statistics (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE UNSPECIFIED |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 21 Jun 2022 16:17 |
Last Modified: | 09 Jan 2023 12:22 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1111/2041-210x.13904 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:187918 |