Abstract

Analyzing movement and interaction of brown hyena in Northern Botswana
Track: Education and Training
Authors: Jennifer Miller

New developments in GPS and related satellite tracking technologies have facilitated the collection of highly accurate data on moving objects, far surpassing the ability to analyze them.
Most wildlife movement data are collected using GPS collars and summarized using (aspatial) statistics such as mean neighbor distance and mean daily distance travelled. Typically the most spatial "product of these data is home range estimation, although high quality movement data have been used recently to illustrate limitations with these simplistic and homogeneous representations of activity spaces. Interactions between individuals are a fundamental aspect of a species' behavioral ecology and information on their frequency and duration is vital to understanding mating and territorial behavior, resource use, and infectious disease epidemiology.
This research focuses on the development of a spatially explicit framework for analysing movement patterns and interaction rates using spatio-temporal data collected over a four year period on brown hyena individuals in Botswana.