Publication
Title
What you see is where you go : visibility influences movement decisions of a forest bird navigating a three-dimensional-structured matrix
Author
Abstract
Animal spatial behaviour is often presumed to reflect responses to visual cues. However, inference of behaviour in relation to the environment is challenged by the lack of objective methods to identify the information that effectively is available to an animal from a given location. In general, animals are assumed to have unconstrained information on the environment within a detection circle of a certain radius (the perceptual range; PR). However, visual cues are only available up to the first physical obstruction within an animal's PR, making information availability a function of an animal's location within the physical environment (the effective visual perceptual range; EVPR). By using LiDAR data and viewshed analysis, we modelled forest birds' EVPRs at each step along a movement path. We found that the EVPR was on average 0.063% that of an unconstrained PR and, by applying a step-selection analysis, that individuals are 1.55 times more likely to move to a tree within their EVPR than to an equivalent tree outside it. This demonstrates that behavioural choices can be substantially impacted by the characteristics of an individual's EVPR and highlights that inferences made from movement data may be improved by accounting for the EVPR.
Language
English
Source (journal)
Biology letters / Royal Society [Londen] - London
Related dataset(s)
Publication
London : 2021
ISSN
1744-9561 [print]
1744-957X [online]
DOI
10.1098/RSBL.2020.0478
Volume/pages
17 :1 (2021) , 6 p.
Article Reference
20200478
ISI
000613729200001
Pubmed ID
33497591
Medium
E-only publicatie
Full text (Publisher's DOI)
Full text (publisher's version - intranet only)
UAntwerpen
Faculty/Department
Research group
Publication type
Subject
Affiliation
Publications with a UAntwerp address
External links
Web of Science
Record
Identifier
Creation 15.03.2021
Last edited 08.12.2024
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