Abstract
The distribution of individuals is a field mainly studied by behavioural sciences. It is largely concerned with animals, although some models can be applied to plants. Behavioural ecologists study decision rules that follow non-sessile individuals on when to start a movement; speed and direction of a movement; sites at which to stop, forage, be vigilant, or rest; and time spent for each activity. The result of these behaviours is an individual pattern of habitat use. Measured along the life of an animal, this pattern demarcates a home range. This chapter begins with a description of movement strategies in animals as mechanisms that result in an individual pattern of distribution. It is followed by two sections that discuss two types of descriptive models of individual habitat use: home-range estimations and site suitability models. The analytical approach is presented in the following two sections, and it is based on foraging theory, which developed models to predict residence times in foraging areas and to resolve the trade-off between forage and defence against predators. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the expected distributions at equilibrium.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Abba AM, Cassini MH (2008) Ecology and conservation of three species of armadillos in the Pampean Region, Argentina. In: Vizcaino S, Loughry J (eds) Biology of the Xenarthra. University of Florida Press, Florida
Abba AM, Cassini MH (2010) Ecological segregation between two sympatric species of armadillos (Xenarthra, Mammalia) with different masticatory morphology. Acta Theriol 55:35–44
Anderson DJ (1982) The home range: a new nonparametric estimation technique. Ecology 63:103–112
Baker RR (1978) The evolutionary ecology of animal migration. Hodder & Sotughton, London
Bartumeus F, Levin SA (2008) Fractal intermittence in locomotion: linking animal behavior to statistical patterns of search. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 105:19072–19077
Bartumeus F, Da Luz MGE, Viswanathan GM, Catalan J (2005) Animal search strategies: a quantitative random-walk analysis. Ecology 86:3078–3087
Bascompte J, Vilà C (1997) Fractals and search paths in mammals. Landsc Ecol 12:13–221
Baum WM (1981) Changing over and choice. In: Bradshaw CM, Szabadi E, Lowe CF (eds) Quantification of steady-state operant behaviour. Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp 118–135
Bell AD (1984) Dynamic morphology: a contribution to plant population ecology. In: Dirzo R, Sarukhan J (eds) Perspectives on plant population ecology. Sinauer, Sunderland, pp 48–65
Bell WJ (1991) Searching behavior: the behavioral ecology of finding resources. Chapman and Hall, New York
Bennett ATD (1996) Do animals have cognitive maps? J Exp Biol 199:219–224
Boyer D, Ramos Fernández G, Miramontes O, Mateos JL, Cocho G, Larralde H, Ramos H, Rojas F (2006) Scale-free foraging by primates emerges from their interaction with a complex environment. Proc R Soc Lond B 273:1743–1750
Brown JS (1988) Patch use as an indicator of habitat preference, predation risk, and competition. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 22:37–47
Burt WH (1943) Territoriality and home range concepts ad applied to mammals. J Mammal 24:346–352
Cassini MH (1993) Searching strategies within food patches in the armadillo Chaetophractus vellerosus. Anim Behav 46:400–402
Cassini MH, Krebs JR (1994) Behavioural responses to food addition by hedgehogs. Ecography 17:289–296
Cassini MH, Kacelnik A, Segura ET (1990) The tale of the Screaming Hairy Armadillo, the Guinea Pig and the marginal value theorem. Anim Behav 39:1030–1050
Charnov EL (1976) Optimal foraging, the marginal value theorem. Theor Popul Biol 9:129–136
Clayton NS, Krebs JR (1994) Hippocampal growth and attrition in birds affected by experience. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 91:7410–7414
Dalziel BD, Morales JM, Fryxell JM (2008) Fitting probability distributions to animal movement trajectories: using artificial neural networks to link distance, resources, and memory. Am Nat 172:248–258
Damschen EI, Brudvig LA, Haddad NM, Levey DJ, Orrock JL, Tewksbury JJ (2008) The movement ecology and dynamics of plant communities in fragmented landscapes. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 105:19078–19083
de Kroon H, Visser EJW, Huber H, Mommer L, Hutchings MJ (2009) A modular concept of plant foraging behaviour: the interplay between local responses and systemic control. Plant Cell Environ 32:704–712
Dixon KR, Chapman JA (1980) Harmonic mean measure of animal activity areas. Ecology 61:1040–1044
Doncaster CP, Macdonald DW (1991) Drifting territoriality in the red fox Vulpes vulpes. J Anim Ecol 60:423–439
Dukas R, Ratcliffe J (2009) Cognitive ecology II. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Dussault C, Ouellet JP, Courtois R, Huot J, Breton L, Jolicoeur H (2005) Linking moose habitat selection to limiting factors. Ecography 28:619–628
Dyer FC (1998) Cognitive exology of navigation. In: Dukas R (ed) Cognitive ecology. The evolutionary ecology of information processing and decision making. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp 201–260
Emery NJ, Clayton NS (2001) Effects of experience and social context on prospective caching strategies by scrub jays. Nature 414:443–446
Getz WM, Saltz D (2008) A framework for generating and analyzing movement paths on ecological landscapes. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 105:19066–19071
Giuggioli L, Bartumeus F (2010) Animal movement, search strategies and behavioural ecology: a cross-disciplinary way forward. J Appl Ecol 79:906–909
Godley BJ, Blumenthal JM, Broderick AC, Coyne MS, Godfrey MH, Hawkes LA (2008) Satellite tracking of sea turtles: where have we been and where do we go next? Endanger Species Res 4:3–22
Gould JL (1982) Ethology. The mechanisms and evolution of behavior. WW Norton, New York
Greegor DH Jr (1985) Ecology of the little hairy armadillo Chaetophractus vellerosus. In: Montgomery GG (ed) The evolution and ecology of armadillos, sloths, and vermilinguas. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC, pp 397–405
Grime JP (1979) Plant strategies and vegetation processes. Wiley, Chischester
Gurarie E, Andrews RD, Laidre KL (2009) A novel method for identifying behavioural changes in animal movement data. Ecol Lett 12:395–408
Hayne DW (1949) Calculation of size of home range. J Mammal 30:1–18
Herrnstein RJ (1961) Relative and absolute strength of responses as a function of frequency of reinforcement. J Exp Anal Behav 4:267–272
Holyoak M, Casagrandi R, Nathan R, Revilla E, Splegel O (2008) Trends and missing parts in the study of movement ecology. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 105:19060–19065
Hutchings MJ, de Kroon H (1994) Foraging in plants: the role of morphological plasticity in resource acquisition. Adv Ecol Res 25:159–238
Jacob J, Brown JS (2000) Microhabitat use, giving-up densities and temporal activity as short- and long-term anti-predator behaviors in common voles. Oikos 91:131–138
Jacobs LF, Schenk F (2003) Unpacking the cognitive map: the parallel map theory of hippocampal function. Psychol Rev 110:285–315
Jander R (1975) Ecological aspects of spatial orientation. Annu Rev Syst Ecol 6:171–188
Jarrel KF, McBride MJ (2008) The surprisingly diverse ways that prokaryotes move. Nat Rev Microbiol 6:466–476
Jennrich RI, Turner FB (1969) Measurement of non-circular home range. J Theor Biol 22:227–237
Keating KA, Cherry S (2004) Use and interpretation of logistic regression in habitat selection studies. J Wildl Manage 68:774–789
Lohmann KJ, Putman NF, Lohmann CMF (2008) Geomagnetic imprinting: a unifiying hypothesis of long-distance natal homing in salmon and sea turtles. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 105:19096–19101
Mandel JT, Bildsteinb KL, Bohrerc G, Winklera DW (2008) Movement ecology of migration in turkey vultures. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 105:19102–19107
Mandelbrot BB (1982) The fractal geometry of nature. WH Freeman, New York
Medri I, Mourão G (2005) Home range of giant anteaters (Myrmecophaga tridactyla) in the Pantanal wetland, Brazil. J Zool (Lond) 266:365–375
Morris PA (1991a) Hedgehogs Erinaceus europaeus. In: Corbet GB, Hams S (eds) The handbook of Bntish mammals. Blackwell, Oxford, pp 37–43
Morris DW (1991b) On the evolutionary stability of dispersal to sink habitats. Am Nat 137:907–911
Nathan R (2008) An emerging movement ecology paradigm. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 105:19050–19051
Nathan R, Getz WM, Revilla E, Holyoak M, Kadmon R, Saltz D, Smouse PE (2008) A movement ecology paradigm for unifying organismal movement research. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 105:19052–19059
Nonacs P (2001) State dependent behavior and the Marginal Value Theorem. Behav Ecol 12:71–83
Ovaskainen O, Smith AD, Osborne JL, Reynolds RD, Carreck NL, Martin AP, Niitepõld K, Hanski I (2008) Tracking butterfly movements with harmonic radar reveals an effect of population age on movement distance. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 105:19090–19095
Oyugi JO, Brown JS (2003) Giving-up densities and habitat preference of European Starlings and American Robins. Condor 105:130–135
Patterson TA, Basson M, Bravington MV, Gunn JS (2009) Classifying movement behaviour in relation to environmental conditions using hidden Markov models. J Anim Ecol 78:1113–1123
Petty JT, Gary D, Grossman (2010) Giving-up densities and ideal pre-emptive patch use in a predatory benthic stream fish. Freshw Biol 55:780–793
Powell RA (2000) Animal home ranges and territories and home range estimators. In: Boitani L, Fuller TK (eds) Research techniques in animal ecology: controversies and consequences. Columbia University Press, New York, pp 65–110
Ramos-Fernández G, Mateos JL, Miramontes O, Larralde H, Cocho G, Ayala Orozco B (2004) Lévy walk patterns in the foraging movements of spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi). Behav Ecol Sociobiol 55:223–230
Shaw JH, Machado Neto J, Carter TS (1987) Behavior of free-living giant anteaters (Myrmecophaga tridactyla). Biotropica 19:255–259
Slade AJ, Hutchings MJ (1987) The effects of nutrient availability on foraging in the clonal herb Glechoma hederacea. J Ecol 75:95–112
Smouse PE, Focardi S, Moorcroft PR, Kie JG, Forester JD, Morales JM (2010) Stochastic modelling of animal movement. Philos Trans R Soc B 365:2201–2211
Staddon JER (1983) Adaptive behaviour and learning. University of Cambridge Press, Cambridge
Stephens DW, Krebs JR (1986) Foraging theory. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ
Stephens DW, Brown JS, Ydenberg (2007) Foraging: behavior and ecology. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Sutherland WJ (1996) From individual behaviour to population ecology. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Tinbergen N (1963) On aims and methods in ethology. Z Tierpsychol 20:410–433
Tolman EC (1948) Cognitive maps in rats and men. Psychol Rev 55:189–208
Urbano F, Cagnacci F, Calenge C, Dettki H, Cameron A, Neteler M (2010) Wildlife tracking data management: a new vision. Philos Trans R Soc B 365:2177–2185
Viswanathan GM, Buldyrev SV, Havlin S, da Luz MGE, Raposo EP, Stanley HE (1999) Optimizing the success of random searches. Nature 401:911–914
Wroot AJ (1984) Feeding ecology of the European hedgehog, Erinaceus europaeus L. Ph D thesis, University of London, London
Zhang HP, Be’er A, Florin EL, Swinney HL (2010) Collective motion and density fluctuations in bacterial colonies. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 107:13626–13630
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Cassini, M.H. (2013). Distribution of Individuals. In: Distribution Ecology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6415-0_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6415-0_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-6414-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-6415-0
eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life SciencesBiomedical and Life Sciences (R0)