Data from: Predicting local and non-local effects of resources on animal space use using a mechanistic step-selection model ...

• Main Authors: Potts, Jonathan R., Bastille-Rousseau, Guillaume, Murray, Dennis L., Schaefer, James A., Lewis, Mark A.
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Dryad 2014
• Subjects: caribou
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.1d60p; https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.1d60p

1. Predicting space use patterns of animals from their interactions with the environment is fundamental for understanding the effect of habitat changes on ecosystem functioning. Recent attempts to address this problem have sought to unify resource selection analysis, where animal space use is derived from available habitat quality, and mechanistic movement models, where detailed movement processes of an animal are used to predict its emergent utilisation distribution. Such models bias the animal's movement towards patches that are easily available and resource-rich, and the result is a predicted probability density at a given position being a function of the habitat quality at that position. However, in reality, the probability that an animal will use a patch of the terrain tends to be a function of the resource quality in both that patch and the surrounding habitat. 2. We propose a mechanistic model where this non-local effect of resources naturally emerges from the local movement processes, by taking into ... : nc_pottsetal_online_dataData on distances between successive locations of Caribou, the habitats at the start and end of the steps, and the probabilities that we would expect each step to end in each habitat if there is no selection. ...