AMoveE 2014: Katherine Mertes
Channel: Movebank
Date: 2014-05-23

This talk was presented by Katherine Mertes on 7 May 2014 as part of the Symposium on Animal Movement and the Environment, held at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh.

Mertes K, Jetz W, 2014, "Evaluating scale-dependence in species-environment relationships of East African birds"

Abstract: Previous investigations into hierarchy theory, hierarchical habitat selection, and perceptual capacities suggest that vertebrate species respond to environmental conditions differently across spatial grains. Wiens (1989) introduced the concept "domains of scale" to describe regions along a theoretical axis of spatial grain where species responses to environmental conditions are relatively similar, separated by transition zones where species responses may abruptly take different forms. A key challenge in ecology is to develop reliable methods to identify scale domains and thresholds for species or broader groups, in order to select grains and extents of analysis that enable accurate inferences on ecological relationships and distribution predictions. Here, we describe scale-dependence in species-environment relationships for select East African bird species. We use remotely sensed data at six relatively fine spatial grains (10--1000m) to represent biologically meaningful environmental conditions, and fuse observational and movement data to capture potential changes in habitat preferences with behavioral state.