title: Sequential decision-making in a variable environment: modeling elk movement in Yellowstone National Park as a dynamic game.
abstract: We develop a suite of models with varying complexity to predict elk movement behavior during the winter on the Northern Range of Yellowstone National Park (YNP). The models range from a simple representation of optimal patch choice to a dynamic game, and we show how the underlying theory in each is related by the presence or absence of state- and frequency-dependence. We compare predictions from each of the models for three variables that are of basic and applied interest: elk survival, aggregation, and use of habitat outside YNP. Our results suggest that despite low overall forage depletion in the winter, frequency-dependence is crucial to the predictions for elk movement and distribution. Furthermore, frequency-dependence interacts with mass-dependence in the predicted outcome of elk decision-making. We use these results to show how models that treat single movement decisions in isolation from the seasonal sequence of decisions are insufficient to capture landscape scale behavior.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, Centre for Mathematical Biology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alta, Canada T6G 2E9. enoonbur@fau.edu
authors.forename: Erik G
authors.initials: EG
authors.lastname: Noonburg
authors.forename: Lora A
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Newman
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lewis
authors.forename: Robert L
authors.initials: RL
authors.lastname: Crabtree
authors.forename: Alexei B
authors.initials: AB
authors.lastname: Potapov
mesh_terms: D025041:Animal Migration; D000818:Animals; D003657:Decision Making; D003670:Deer; D017753:Ecosystem; D005716:Game Theory; D008433:Mathematics; D008954:Models, Biological; D011157:Population Dynamics; D013037:Spatial Behavior; D014959:Wyoming