Uncovering multiple influences on space use by deer mice using NEON data

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Authors

Sean O'Fallon , Noa Pinter-Wollman, Karen Mabry

Abstract

Space use by animals is affected by multiple factors; previous researchers have examined the effects of influences such as sex, body condition, and population density on home range area. However, evaluating the simultaneous influences of multiple factors on animal space use has been relatively intractable due to sample size limitations. We capitalize on National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) data to ask what factors determine space use by deer mice (genus Peromyscus). We examined data from 10 years of repeated captures of individually identified mice at 36 sites across North America. We confirmed previous findings that males have larger home ranges than females and that home range area decreases with increasing animal density. In addition, our large sample size (N = 2420 individuals) enabled us to examine the interacting influences of these and other intrinsic and extrinsic factors using a robust statistical framework. We found that the relationship between body condition and home range area differs between male and female mice, and that habitat type, latitude, and animal density all interact to influence space use. We conclude that high throughput ecological data can be used to examine important behavioral questions that have long eluded investigators.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.32942/X2HK7S

Subjects

Behavior and Ethology, Life Sciences

Keywords

behavioral ecology, NEON, home range, Peromyscus, space use, Utilization distribution

Dates

Published: 2024-05-10 03:41

License

CC BY Attribution 4.0 International

Additional Metadata

Language:
English

Conflict of interest statement:
The authors have no conflict of interest to declare.

Data and Code Availability Statement:
All data (downloaded from the NEON repository) and analysis code are available on Github: https://github.com/seanofallon/neon-mice_home-ranges.