AMoveE 2014: Andrew Allen
Channel: Movebank
Date: 15/05/2014

This talk was presented by Andrew M. Allen on 6 May 2014 as part of the Symposium on Animal Movement and the Environment, held at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh, NC.

Allen AM, Ericcson G, Singh N, 2014, "Scaling up individual movement patterns to population level movements"

Abstract: Little is known about how population level movements emerge from individual movement patterns, as often only a few individuals from a population are tracked in space and time, and their movement strategies are not accounted for. This knowledge is vital for both ecology and management of animal populations since management interventions are usually made at the population level. We analysed the multi-annual space use of 346 moose (Alces alces) from seven study areas spread over a 1,500 km latitudinal gradient in order to gain a better understanding of population level movements. Movement data was analysed at annual and seasonal (winter/summer) scales with 551 complete years of movements available for analysis. We identified the movement strategy (migratory, sedentary, nomadic or dispersal) of moose and computed annual and seasonal utilisation distributions (UDs) for all individuals and years. We used multivariate analyses and generalised linear mixed models to identify the relative importance of an individual's life history and the external environment on observed movement patterns. Variation in movement and space use patterns were quantified at multiple scales that include variation between study areas, within study areas and within individuals (i.e. inter-annual variation). Individuals demonstrated variable movement strategies from migration to complete residence, which varied across years and populations. The average UD of migrants was up to seven times larger than that of residents and summer UDs were larger than winter UDs. Males used larger areas than females and older animals had larger ranges than younger individuals. These life history traits explained most variation in the size of UDs, but interacted with external environmental factors that include snow depth, primary productivity and the proportion of important habitats in the landscape. Furthermore, migratory individuals in the north of Sweden showed a clear divide in seasonal space use patterns, using high elevation sparsely vegetated broadleaf-forest landscapes in the summer compared to low elevation coniferous-forest dominated landscapes in the winter. In contrast, resident individuals used coniferous-forest dominated landscapes year round and this pattern was observed in both the north and south of Sweden. Our results indicate the importance of sex ratios, age distribution, movement characteristics and their interaction with external environment on the seasonal and annual home range size in terrestrial animals. The scale of this study provides an important contribution towards understanding intra-specific variation in space use and how population level movements emerge from individual movement patterns, knowledge that is vital for adapting management actions to species ecology.