Data from: Hierarchy in structuring of resource selection: Understanding elk selection across space, time, and movement strategies

Movement is a fundamental aspect of animal ecology that varies across
space, time, and among individuals or groups within a population. Broad
scale patterns of animal movement are often classified into different
movement strategies such as resident, nomadic, and migratory. While
landscape-level environmental patterns can predict the presence of
different movement strategies in an area, elucidating how these patterns
downscale to fine-scale resource selection behaviors remains a challenge.
Partially migratory systems, where both migrants and residents coexist,
offer a unique opportunity to address these questions. Using tracking data
from four Rocky Mountain elk (Cervus canadensis) herds situated primarily
within Colorado, USA, we assessed between-herd, seasonal, and within-herd
variation in resource selection behavior. We modelled fine-scale seasonal
resource selection and compared strategy-specific behaviors using resource
selection functions. Additionally, we used a consistency score to quantify
the extent of differentiation in resource selection behavior across
strategies, seasons, herds, and groups of covariates. We found variation
in strategy frequency within each herd and in selection behavior,
highlighting the complexity and context-dependence of strategy-specific
selection. Despite herd-specific differences, some consistent trends
emerged, with elk avoiding human development and roads at fine scales
while selecting areas with higher productivity during summer. Our
consistency analysis identified where elk most diverged in their selection
behavior, revealing the greatest differences among herds, followed by
variation between seasons, and lastly between movement strategies. Elk
exhibited more uniform responses to productivity, contrasting with greater
differentiation in responses to anthropogenic-related covariates. Overall,
our study improves our understanding of elk behavior across space, time,
and movement strategies, and sheds light on the hierarchical influences of
space and time in constraining behavior.