From steps to home range formation: species-specific movement upscaling among sympatric ungulates

Animals move to interact with the environment in order to find food resources and cover. Intrinsic characteristics affecting feeding and antipredatory strategies likely shape variation in movement patterns and home range formation between individuals, populations and species. Browsing herbivores selectively forage on patchily distributed resources in areas with more canopy cover, whereas mixed feeders and grazers feed on more open grasslands and tend to aggregate as an antipredatory strategy. We therefore predicted that at small temporal scales, browsers will show greater net displacements (i.e. typical of searching patterns) than mixed feeders or grazers; but at larger temporal scales, we expect the opposite pattern, since gregarious species will need to use larger areas to feed the whole herd. We also predicted that the feeding/antipredatory strategy will determine the behavioural responses to other environmental factors. To test this, we compared spatial movement patterns at multiple...

动物通过移动与环境互动，以寻找食物资源和遮蔽处。影响取食和反捕食策略的内在特征，可能塑造个体、种群及物种间运动模式与家域形成的差异。食叶性草食动物会选择性地取食冠层覆盖较密区域中呈斑块状分布的资源；而混合食性动物与食草性动物则在更开阔的草原取食，并倾向于通过聚集来实施反捕食策略。因此我们预测，在较小时间尺度上，食叶性动物的净位移（即典型的搜索模式）会大于混合食性或食草性动物；但在较大时间尺度上，预期结果相反——因为群居物种需要利用更大区域来满足整个群体的取食需求。我们还预测，取食/反捕食策略将决定动物对其他环境因素的行为响应。为验证这一假设，我们比较了多个...