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The Langevin diffusion as a continuous-time model of animal movement and habitat selection

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Date
24/08/2019
Author
Michelot, Théo
Gloaguen, Pierre
Blackwell, Paul G.
Etienne, Marie-Pierre
Keywords
Animal movement
Continuous time
Resource selection
Step selection
Langevin diffusion
Potential function
Utilisation distribution
QH301 Biology
QA Mathematics
DAS
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Abstract
1. The utilisation distribution of an animal describes the relative probability of space use. It is natural to think of it as the long-term consequence of the animal's short-term movement decisions: it is the accumulation of small displacements which, over time, gives rise to global patterns of space use. However, many estimation methods for the utilisation distribution either assume the independence of observed locations and ignore the underlying movement (e.g. kernel density estimation), or are based on simple Brownian motion movement rules (e.g. Brownian bridges). 2. We introduce a new continuous-time model of animal movement, based on the Langevin diffusion. This stochastic process has an explicit stationary distribution, conceptually analogous to the idea of the utilisation distribution, and thus provides an intuitive framework to integrate movement and space use. We model the stationary (utilisation) distribution with a resource selection function to link the movement to spatial covariates, and allow inference about habitat preferences of animals. 3. Standard approximation techniques can be used to derive the pseudo-likelihood of the Langevin diffusion movement model, and to estimate habitat preference and movement parameters from tracking data. We investigate the performance of the method on simulated data, and discuss its sensitivity to the time scale of the sampling. We present an example of its application to tracking data of Steller sea lions (Eumetopias jubatus). 4. Due to its continuous-time formulation, this method can be applied to irregular telemetry data. The movement model is specified using a habitat-dependent utilisation distribution, and it provides a rigorous framework to estimate long-term habitat selection from correlated movement data. The Langevin movement model can be approximated by linear model, which allows for very fast inference. Standard tools such as residuals can be used for model checking.
Citation
Michelot , T , Gloaguen , P , Blackwell , P G & Etienne , M-P 2019 , ' The Langevin diffusion as a continuous-time model of animal movement and habitat selection ' , Methods in Ecology and Evolution , vol. Early View . https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.13275
Publication
Methods in Ecology and Evolution
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.13275
ISSN
2041-210X
Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2019 The Authors. Methods in Ecology and Evolution © 2019 British Ecological Society. This work has been made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the author created, accepted version manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.13275
Description
TM was supported by the Centre for Advanced Biological Modelling at the University of Sheffield, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, award number DS-2014-081.
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  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/20501

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