Department of Integrative Biology, University of Guelph, 50 Stone Rd. East, Guelph, N1G 2W1, ON, Canada.
J Anim Ecol. 2013 Jan;82(1):96-106. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2656.2012.02035.x. Epub 2012 Sep 28.
Within the rapidly developing field of movement ecology, much attention has been given to studying the movement of individuals within a subset of their population's occupied range. Our understanding of the effects of landscape heterogeneity on animal movement is still fairly limited as it requires studying the movement of multiple individuals across a variety of environmental conditions. Gaining deeper understanding of the environmental drivers of movement is a crucial component of predictive models of population spread and habitat selection and may help inform management and conservation. In Ontario, woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) occur along a wide geographical gradient ranging from the boreal forest to the Hudson Bay floodplains. We used high-resolution GPS data, collected from 114 individuals across a 450000 km(2) area in northern Ontario, to link movement behaviour to underlying local environmental variables associated with habitat permeability, predation risk and forage availability. We show that a great deal of observed variability in movement patterns across space and time can be attributed to local environmental conditions, with residual individual differences that may reflect spatial population structure. We discuss our results in the context of current knowledge of movement and caribou ecology and highlight potential applications of our approach to the study of wide-ranging animals.
在快速发展的运动生态学领域，人们非常关注研究个体在其种群占据范围内的子集内的运动。由于需要研究多个个体在各种环境条件下的运动，因此我们对景观异质性对动物运动的影响的理解仍然相当有限。深入了解运动的环境驱动因素是种群扩散和栖息地选择预测模型的关键组成部分，可能有助于为管理和保护提供信息。在安大略省，林地驯鹿（Rangifer tarandus caribou）分布在从北方森林到哈德逊湾泛滥平原的广阔地理梯度上。我们使用了来自安大略省北部 450000 平方公里区域的 114 个个体收集的高分辨率 GPS 数据，将运动行为与与栖息地渗透性、捕食风险和饲料可用性相关的潜在局部环境变量联系起来。我们表明，在空间和时间上的运动模式中存在大量可观察到的可变性，可以归因于局部环境条件，而剩余的个体差异可能反映了空间种群结构。我们根据当前对运动和驯鹿生态学的了解讨论了我们的结果，并强调了我们的方法在研究广泛分布的动物方面的潜在应用。
