Using transient encounter rates to quantify spatial patterns of home-range organization
Abstract
Encounters between individuals underlie key ecological processes such as predation, mating, and disease transmission, making encounter rates a direct link between individual movement behavior and population-level outcomes. We investigate how two common features of animal movement--directional persistence and range residency--jointly shape encounter rates. Using the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck with foraging (OUF) model, which integrates these two properties of animal movement, we derive exact analytical expressions for encounter rates and show that, for range-resident animals, the effect of persistence depends strongly on the degree of home-range overlap. Based on this theoretical result, we then introduce a new encounter-based metric that quantifies the spatial organization of home ranges at scales relevant to animal encounters. We finally apply this metric to movement data from lowland tapirs (Tapirus terrestris) in Brazil's Pantanal region and find a significant level of home-range spatial segregation, consistent with the solitary behavior of this species.
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