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- Title
Memory keeps you at home: a mechanistic model for home range emergence.
- Authors
Van Moorter, Bram; Visscher, Darcy; Benhamou, Simon; Börger, Luca; Boyce, Mark S.; Gaillard, Jean-Michel
- 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.
- Subjects
ANIMAL memory; ANIMAL populations; ANIMAL ecology; ANIMAL mechanics; ENVIRONMENTAL sciences; ANIMAL psychology; SHORT-term memory
- Publication
Oikos, 2009, Vol 118, Issue 5, p641
- ISSN
0030-1299
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/j.1600-0706.2008.17003.x