A novel method for detecting extra-home range movements (EHRMs) by animals and recommendations for future EHRM studies

Infrequent, long-distance animal movements outside of typical home range areas provide useful insights into resource acquisition, gene flow, and disease transmission within the fields of conservation and wildlife management, yet understanding of these movements is still limited across taxa. To detect these extra-home range movements (EHRMs) in spatial relocation datasets, most previous studies compare relocation points against fixed spatial and temporal bounds, typified by seasonal home ranges (referred to here as the “Fixed-Period” method). However, utilizing home ranges modelled over fixed time periods to detect EHRMs within those periods likely results in many EHRMs going undocumented, particularly when an animal’s space use changes within that period of time. To address this, we propose a novel, “Moving-Window” method of detecting EHRMs through an iterative process, comparing each day’s relocation data to the preceding period of space use only. We compared the number and characteris...