Abstract
Understanding ecological processes relies upon the knowledge of the dynamics of each individual
component. In the context of animal population ecology, the way animals move and
interact is of fundamental importance in explaining a variety of observed patterns. Here,
we present a theoretical investigation on the movement dynamics of interacting scent-marking
animals.We study how the movement statistics of territorial animals is responsible for the
appearance of damped oscillations in the mean square displacement (MSD) of the animals.
This non-monotonicity is shown to depend on one dimensionless parameter, given by the ratio of the correlation distance between successive steps to the size of the territory. As that parameter increases, the time dependence of the animal’s MSD displays a transition from monotonic, characteristic of Brownian walks, to non-monotonic, characteristic of highly correlated walks. The results presented here represent a novel way of determining the degree of persistence in animal movement processes within confined regions
Translated title of the contribution | Predicting oscillatory dynamics in the movement of territorial animals |
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Original language | English |
Pages (from-to) | 1529 - 1543 |
Number of pages | 15 |
Journal | Journal of the Royal Society Interface |
Volume | 9 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Jul 2012 |
Research Groups and Themes
- Engineering Mathematics Research Group