Modeling Home Range and Intra-Specific Spatial Interaction in Wild Animal Populations

TL;DR

This paper develops methods to analyze static and dynamic spatial interactions among wild animals, specifically black bears, using home range estimation and movement modeling to better understand their ecological behaviors.

Contribution

It introduces comprehensive methodologies combining home range estimation, spatial statistics, and envelope testing to study intra-specific interactions in wildlife populations.

Findings

Black bears showed no significant preference for association or avoidance.

Methods effectively quantified static and dynamic interactions.

Study enhances understanding of animal spatial behavior.

Abstract

Interactions among individuals from the same-species of wild animals are an important component of population dynamics. An interaction can be either static (based on overlap of space use) or dynamic (based on movement). The goal of this work is to determine the level of static interactions between individuals from the same-species of wild animals using 95\% and 50\% home ranges, as well as to model their movement interactions, which could include attraction, avoidance (or repulsion), or lack of interaction, in order to gain new insights and improve our understanding of ecological processes. Home range estimation methods (minimum convex polygon, kernel density estimator, and autocorrelated kernel density estimator), inhomogeneous multitype (or cross-type) summary statistics, and envelope testing methods (pointwise and global envelope tests) were proposed to study the nature of the same-species wild-animal spatial interactions. This study provides comprehensive, self-contained methodological details for investigating spatial interactions between individuals of the same species in wildlife populations. Using GPS collar data, we applied the methods to quantify both static and dynamic interactions between black bears in southern Alabama, USA. In general, our findings suggest that the black bears in our dataset showed no significant preference to live together or apart, i.e., there was no significant deviation from independence toward association or avoidance (i.e., segregation) between the bears. This can be loosely interpreted to mean that a black bear is generally indifferent to the presence of other black bears living or wandering nearby.