Movement Ecology: Stepping into the Mainstream
Post provided by Theoni Photopoulou
“Movement is the glue that ties ecological processes together”
from Francesca Cagnacci et al. 2010
Movement ecology is a cross-disciplinary field. Its main aim is to quantitatively describe and understand how movement relates to individual and population-level processes for resource acquisition and, ultimately, survival. Today the study of movement ecology hinges on two 21st century advances:
- Animal-borne devices/tags (biologging science, Hooker et al., 2007) and/or remote sensing technology to quantify movement and collect data from remote or otherwise challenging environments
- Computational power sufficient to manipulate, process and analyse substantial volumes of data
Although datasets often involve small numbers of individuals, each individual can have thousands – sometimes even millions – of data points associated with it. Study species have tended to be large birds and mammals, due to the ease of tag attachment. However, the trend for miniaturisation of tags and the development of remote detection technologies (such as radar, e.g. Capaldi et al., 2000), have allowed researchers to track and study ever smaller animals. Continue reading “Movement Ecology: Stepping into the Mainstream”
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