Effects of Land Cover on the Movement of Frugivorous Birds in a Heterogeneous Landscape.

ABSTRACT: Movement is a key spatiotemporal process that enables interactions between animals and other elements of nature. The understanding of animal trajectories and the mechanisms that influence them at the landscape level can yield insight into ecological processes and potential solutions to specific ecological problems. Based upon optimal foraging models and empirical evidence, we hypothesized that movement by thrushes is highly tortuous (low average movement speeds and homogeneous distribution of turning angles) inside forests, moderately tortuous in urban areas, which present intermediary levels of resources, and minimally tortuous (high movement speeds and turning angles next to 0 radians) in open matrix types (e.g., crops and pasture). We used data on the trajectories of two common thrush s

SUBMITTER: Da Silveira NS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4892584 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature