Seasonal variation in the ranging behavior of elephants in the Laikipia-Samburu ecosystem.

ABSTRACT: African savanna elephants are a highly mobile species that ranges widely across the diversity of ecosystems they inhabit. In xeric environments, elephant movement patterns are largely dictated by the availability of water and suitable forage resources, which can drive strong seasonal changes in their movement behavior. In this study, we analyzed a unique movement dataset from 43 collared elephants, collected over a period of 10 years, to assess the degree to which seasonal changes influences home range size of elephants in the semi-arid, Laikipia-Samburu ecosystem of northern Kenya. Auto-correlated Kernel Density Estimation (AKDE) was used to estimate elephants' seasonal home range size. For each individual elephant, we also calculated seasonal home range shifts, as the distance between we

SUBMITTER: Kuria LW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11347863 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature