State-space modeling reveals habitat perception of a small terrestrial mammal in a fragmented landscape

1.Habitat loss is a major cause of species loss, and is expected to increase. Loss of habitat is often associated with fragmentation of remaining habitat. Whether species can persist in fragmented landcsapes may depend on their movement behaviour, which determines their capability to respond flexibility to changes in habitat structure and spatial distribution of patches. 2.Movement is frequently generalised to describe a total area used, or segmented to highlight resource use, often overlooking finer-scale individual behaviours. We applied hidden Markov models (HMM) to movement data from 26 eastern bettongs (Bettongia gaimardi) in fragmented landscapes. HMMs are able to identify distinct behaviour states associated with different movement patterns, and discover how these behaviours are associated with habitat features. 3.Three distinct behaviour states were identified and interepretated as denning, foraging and fast-travelling. The probability of occurrence of each state, and of trans...