Quantifying drivers of wild pig movement across multiple spatial and temporal scales

摘要: The movement behavior of an animal is determined by extrinsic and intrinsic factors that operate at multiple spatio-temporal scales, yet much our knowledge comes from studies examine only one or two scales concurrently. Understanding the drivers across crucial for understanding fundamentals ecology, predicting changes in distribution, describing disease dynamics, identifying efficient methods wildlife conservation management. We obtained over 400,000 GPS locations wild pigs 13 different spanning six states southern U.S.A., quantified rates home range size within a single analytical framework. used generalized additive mixed model framework to quantify effects five broad predictor categories on movement: individual-level attributes, geographic factors, landscape meteorological conditions, temporal variables. examined predictors three scales: daily, monthly, using all data during study period. considered both local environmental such as daily weather distance various resources landscape, well acting broader spatial scale ecoregion season. found variables (temperature pressure), features (distance water sources), broad-scale factor (ecoregion), characteristics (sex-age class), drove pig but magnitude shape covariate relationships differed scales. we present can be assess patterns arising sources species while accounting correlations. Our analyses show which reaction norms change based response data, illustrating importance appropriately defining covariates depending intended implications research (e.g., due climate versus planning local-scale management). argue consideration same (rather than comparing separate post-hoc) gives more accurate quantification cross-scale error correlation.