How range residency and long-range perception change encounter rates

Author(s)

Martinez-Garcia, Ricardo ^{[1, 2, 3]} ; Fleming, Christen H. ^{[4, 5]} ; Seppelt, Ralf ^{[6, 7]} ; Fagan, William F. ^[4] ; Calabrese, Justin M. ^{[4, 5, 8, 9, 10]}

Affiliation

^[1] Univ Estadual Paulista, Inst Fis Teor, Rua Dr Bento Teobaldo Ferraz 271, Bloco 2, BR-01140070 Sao Paulo, SP - Brazil

^[2] Princeton Univ, Dept Ecol & Evolutionary Biol, Princeton, NJ 08544 - USA

^[3] Univ Estadual Paulista, ICTP South Amer Inst Fundamental Res, Rua Dr Bento Teobaldo Ferraz 271, Bloco 2, BR-01140070 Sao Paulo, SP - Brazil

^[4] Univ Maryland, Dept Biol, College Pk, MD 20742 - USA

^[5] Smithsonian Conservat Biol Inst, Natl Zool Pk, 1500 Remount Rd, Front Royal, VA 22630 - USA

^[6] UFZ Helmholtz Ctr Environm Res, Dept Computat Landscape Ecol, Leipzig - Germany

^[7] Martin Luther Univ Halle Wittenberg, Inst Geosci & Geog, Halle, Saale - Germany

^[8] Ctr Adv Syst Understanding CASUS Gorlitz, Gorlitz - Germany

^[9] Helmholtz Zentrum Dresden Rossendorf HZDR, Dresden - Germany

^[10] UFZ Helmholtz Ctr Environm Res, Dept Ecol Modelling, Permoserstr 15, D-04318 Leipzig - Germany

• Document type: Journal article
• Source: Journal of Theoretical Biology; v. 498, AUG 7 2020.
• Web of Science Citations: 0

Abstract

Encounter rates link movement strategies to intra- and inter-specific interactions, and therefore translate individual movement behavior into higher-level ecological processes. Indeed, a large body of interacting population theory rests on the law of mass action, which can be derived from assumptions of Brownian motion in an enclosed container with exclusively local perception. These assumptions imply completely uniform space use, individual home ranges equivalent to the population range, and encounter dependent on movement paths actually crossing. Mounting empirical evidence, however, suggests that animals use space non-uniformly, occupy home ranges substantially smaller than the population range, and are often capable of nonlocal perception. Here, we explore how these empirically supported behaviors change pairwise encounter rates. Specifically, we derive novel analytical expressions for encounter rates under Ornstein-Uhlenbeck motion, which features non-uniform space use and allows individual home ranges to differ from the population range. We compare OU-based encounter predictions to those of Reflected Brownian Motion, from which the law of mass action can be derived. For both models, we further explore how the interplay between the scale of perception and home-range size affects encounter rates. We find that neglecting realistic movement and perceptual behaviors can lead to systematic, non-negligible biases in encounter-rate predictions. (C) 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 16/01343-7 - ICTP South American Institute for Fundamental Research: a regional center for theoretical physics
• Grantee: Nathan Jacob Berkovits
• Support Opportunities: Special Projects
• FAPESP's process: 19/24433-0 - Toward a mechanistic theory for biological patterns and their ecosystem-management possibilities
• Grantee: Ricardo Martinez Garcia
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - BIOTA - Young Researchers