GPS locations for mechanistic home range analysis reveals drivers of space use patterns for a non-territorial passerine

1. Home ranging is a near-ubiquitous phenomenon in the animal kingdom.  Understanding the behavioural mechanisms that give rise to observed home range patterns is thus an important general question, and mechanistic home range analysis (MHRA) provides the tools to address it.  However, such analysis has hitherto been restricted to scent-marking territorial animals, so its potential breadth of application has not been tested.

2. Here, we apply MHRA to a population of long-tailed tits Aegithalos caudatus a non- territorial passerine, in the non-breeding season where there is no clear \"central place\" near which birds need to remain.  The aim is to uncover the principal movement mechanisms underlying observed home range formation.

3. Our foundational models consist of memory-mediated conspecific avoidance between flocks, combined with attraction to woodland.  These are then modified to incorporate the effects of flock size and relatedness, to uncover the effect of these on the mechanis...