Using a novel framework of animal space-use behaviors reveals a gradient
of responses to human modification
- Nicole Gorman,
- Mike Eichholz,
- Daniel Skinner,
- Peter Schlichting,
- Guillaume Bastille-Rousseau
Peter Schlichting
Illinois Department of Natural Resources
Author ProfileGuillaume Bastille-Rousseau
Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Author ProfileAbstract
Spatial behavior, including home-ranging behaviors, habitat selection,
and movement, can be extremely informative in estimating how animals
respond to landscape heterogeneity. Responses in these spatial behaviors
to factors such as human modification and resources on the landscape can
highlight a species' spatial strategy to maximize fitness and minimize
risk. These strategies can vary on spatial, temporal, and individual
scales, and the combination of behaviors on these scales can lead to
very different strategies among species. Harnessing the variation
present at these scales, we developed a framework for predicting how
species may respond to changes in their environments on a gradient
ranging from generic, where a species exhibits broad-stroke spatial
responses to their environment, to nuanced, in which a species uses a
combination of temporal and spatial strategies paired with functional
responses in selection behaviors. Using 46 GPS-tracked bobcats and
coyotes inhabiting a landscape encompassing a range of human
modification, we evaluated where each species falls along the
generic-to-nuanced gradient. Bobcats and coyotes studied occupied
opposite ends of this gradient, using different strategies in response
to human modification in their home ranges, with bobcats broadly
expanding their home range with increases in human modification and
clearly selecting for or avoiding features on the landscape with
temporal consistency. Meanwhile, coyotes did not expand their home
ranges with human modification, but instead displayed temporal and
spatial adjustments in their functional responses to human modification.
These differences in response to habitat, resources, and risk between
the two species highlighted the variation in spatial behaviors animals
can use to exist in anthropogenic environments influenced by
interspecific variation in behavioral plasticity. Categorizing animal
spatial behavior based on the generic-to-nuanced gradient can help in
predicting how a species will respond to future change based on their
current spatial behavior.