Using First-Passage Time in the Analysis of Area-Restricted Search and Habitat Selection

How animals change their movement patterns in relation to the environment is a central topic in a wide area of ecology, including foraging ecology, habitat selection, and spatial population ecology. To understand the underlying behavioral mechanisms involved, there is a need for methods to measure c...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ecology (Durham) 2003-02, Vol.84 (2), p.282-288
Main Authors: Fauchald, Per, Tveraa, Torkild
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal and plant ecology
Animal behavior
Animal ecology
animal movement
Animal, plant and microbial ecology
Animals
Antarctic Petrel
Autoecology
Aves
Biological and medical sciences
Birds
Circles
dispersal
Ecology
Environment
first-passage time
Foraging
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Habitat selection
Habitats
hierarchical foraging
Landscape ecology
Landscapes
Predators
radio tracking
random walk
satellite telemetry
scale
search pattern
Thalassoica antarctica
Vertebrata
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Summary:How animals change their movement patterns in relation to the environment is a central topic in a wide area of ecology, including foraging ecology, habitat selection, and spatial population ecology. To understand the underlying behavioral mechanisms involved, there is a need for methods to measure changes in movement patterns along a pathway through the landscape. We used simulated pathways and satellite tracking of a long-ranging seabird to explore the properties of first-passage time as a measure of search effort along a path. The first-passage time is defined as the time required for an animal to cross a circle with a given radius. It is a measure of how much time an animal uses within a given area. First-passage time is scale dependent, and a plot of variance in first-passage time vs. spatial scale reveals the spatial scale at which the animal concentrates its search effort. By averaging the first-passage time on a geographical grid, it is possible to relate first-passage time to environmental variables and the search pattern of other individuals.
ISSN:0012-9658
1939-9170
DOI:10.1890/0012-9658(2003)084[0282:ufptit]2.0.co;2