Data from: Is pre-breeding prospecting behaviour affected by snow cover in the irruptive snowy owl? A test using state-space modelling and environmental data annotated via Movebank ...

• Main Authors: Therrien, Jean-François, Pinaud, David, Gauthier, Gilles, Lecomte, Nicolas, Bildstein, Keith L., Bety, Joël
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Movebank Data Repository 2015
• Subjects: Bubo scandiacus; animal tracking; Argos; dispersal; Env-DATA; Movebank; NCEP NARR; pre-breeding movements; snow; satellite telemetry; snowy owl; state-space model; Arctic
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5441/001/1.32rf091b; https://www.datarepository.movebank.org/handle/10255/move.424

Background: Tracking individual animals using satellite telemetry has improved our understanding of animal movements considerably. Nonetheless, thorough statistical treatment of Argos datasets is often jeopardized by their coarse temporal resolution. State-space modelling can circumvent some of the inherent limitations of Argos datasets, such as the limited temporal resolution of locations and the lack of information pertaining to the behavioural state of the tracked individuals at each location. We coupled state-space modelling with environmental characterisation of modelled locations on a 3-year Argos dataset of 9 breeding snowy owls to assess whether searching behaviour for breeding sites was affected by snow cover and depth in an arctic predator that shows a lack of breeding site fidelity. Results: The state-space modelling approach allowed the discrimination of two behavioural states (searching and moving) during pre-breeding movements. Tracked snowy owls constantly switched from moving to searching ...