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Multi-scale movement syndromes for comparative analyses of animal movement patterns
Roland Kays1,2,3, Ben Hirsch4,5, Damien Caillaud6
1Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Balboa, Republic of Panama. rwkays@ncsu.edu.
Movement Ecology
|October 4, 2023
Summary
Researchers developed a new multi-scale movement syndrome (MSMS) framework to analyze animal movement patterns. This framework revealed three distinct movement syndromes in four mammal species, primarily influenced by feeding ecology, with implications for seed dispersal.
Area of Science:
- Ecology
- Zoology
- Movement Ecology
Background:
- Animal movement is crucial for survival and reproduction, encompassing foraging, habitat selection, predator avoidance, and reproduction.
- High-resolution tracking data allows for detailed movement analysis, revealing species-specific behavioral strategies.
- Comparative approaches using accumulated data can uncover general drivers of movement variation, but require scale-specific considerations.
Purpose of the Study:
- Introduce a novel multi-scale movement syndrome (MSMS) framework for describing and comparing animal movements.
- Utilize the MSMS framework to explore and compare the movement behaviors of four sympatric mammal species.
- Identify general causes and consequences of variation in animal movement patterns across different scales.
Main Methods:
- Developed a hierarchical MSMS framework with four scales: fine-scale steps, daily paths, life-history phases, and lifetime tracks.
- Proposed metrics to quantify movement patterns at each hierarchical scale.
- Applied the first three scales of the MSMS framework to compare movement data from 46 individuals across four frugivorous mammal species.
Main Results:
- While fine-scale movements showed subtle inter-species differences, path- and life-history phase analyses revealed three distinct movement syndromes.
- Feeding ecology emerged as a stronger predictor of movement patterns than locomotory or sensory adaptations.
- Movement patterns varied significantly among the studied mammal species.
Conclusions:
- The identified movement syndromes have potential ecosystem implications, particularly for seed dispersal patterns due to the role of these species.
- The multiscale approach provides a robust hierarchical framework for comparative animal movement studies, addressing ecological and evolutionary questions.
- This framework can link movement processes with emergent patterns of space use, paralleling resource selection function analyses.
