movementecology

Movement ecology studies how and why organisms move through space and time, integrating internal state, motion capacity, navigation, and the external environment. It uses the movement ecology paradigm to view movement as the outcome of interactions among these determinants across scales.

Internal state includes energy, reproduction, and risk. Motion capacity reflects biomechanics and energy budgets. Navigation covers perception, decision making, and strategies for moving toward goals or away from harm. The external environment includes resources, habitat structure, weather, predators, and barriers.

Researchers use telemetry and sensors—GPS, accelerometers, radio tags—and combine them with spatial data and models. Common methods include state-space models to infer hidden behaviors, step- and resource-selection functions, mechanistic movement models, and agent-based simulations.

Applications span conservation, disease ecology, invasive species, and landscape management. Challenges include scale dependence, data gaps, measurement error, and uncertainty.

Movement ecology is interdisciplinary, linking physiology, behavior, ecology, geography, and statistics to explain movement patterns and their ecological consequences.