A unifying framework for quantifying the nature of animal interactions.
Collective phenomena, whereby agent-agent interactions determine spatial patterns, are ubiquitous in the animal kingdom. On the other hand, movement and space use are also greatly influenced by the interactions between animals and their environment. Despite both types of interaction fundamentally influencing animal behaviour, there has hitherto been no unifying framework for the models proposed in both areas. Here, we construct a general method for inferring population-level spatial patterns from underlying individual movement and interaction processes, a key ingredient in building a statistical mechanics for ecological systems. We show that resource selection functions, as well as several examples of collective motion models, arise as special cases of our framework, thus bringing together resource selection analysis and collective animal behaviour into a single theory. In particular, we focus on combining the various mechanistic models of territorial interactions in the literature with step selection functions, by incorporating interactions into the step selection framework and demonstrating how to derive territorial patterns from the resulting models. We demonstrate the efficacy of our model by application to a population of insectivore birds in the Amazon rainforest.
Centre for Mathematical Biology, Department of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2G1 jrpotts@ualberta.ca.
Jonathan R
JR
Potts
School of Renewable Natural Resources, Louisiana State University Agricultural Center, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA INPA, Projeto Dinâmica Biológica de Fragmentos Florestais, Avenue André Araújo 2936, Petrópolis, Manaus 69083-000, Brazil.
Karl
K
Mokross
Centre for Mathematical Biology, Department of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2G1 Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2G1.
Mark A
MA
Lewis
D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D001717:Birds / Q000502:physiology*; D008954:Models, Biological; D011157:Population Dynamics; D065947:Rainforest; D013731:Territoriality
animal movement; collective behaviour; insectivore birds; step selection; territoriality; theoretical ecology