Understanding patterns of animal space use and range fidelity has important implications for species and habitat conservation. For species that live in highly seasonal environments, such as mountain ...goats (Oreamnos americanus), spatial use patterns are expected to vary in relation to seasonal changes in environmental conditions and sex‐ or age‐specific selection pressures. To address hypotheses about sex, age, and seasonality influence on space‐use ecology, we collected GPS location data from 263 radio‐collared mountain goats (males, n = 140; females, n = 123) in coastal Alaska during 2005–2016. Location data were analyzed to derive seasonal and sex‐specific fixed‐kernel home range estimates and to quantify the degree of seasonal range and utilization distribution overlap. Overall, we determined that home range size was smallest during winter, expanded coincident with the onset of green‐up and parturition, and was largest during summer. Home range size of males and females did not differ significantly during winter, but females had larger home ranges than males during summer, a relationship that was switched during the mating season. Pairwise comparisons involving individual females across subsequent years indicated home ranges were significantly smaller during years when they gave birth to offspring. Mountain goats exhibited a strong degree of range fidelity, and 99% (n = 138) of individual animals returned to their previous year's seasonal range with an average annual Bhattacharyya's affinity utilization distribution overlap index of 68%. Similarity of seasonal home range utilization distributions varied in relation to sex and season in some respects. Home range overlap was highest during the summer vegetation growing season, particularly among females. These findings advance our understanding about how environmental variation and sex‐ and age‐related reproductive constraints influence space use and range fidelity among alpine ungulates. Documentation of the high degree of range fidelity among mountain goats has important conservation implications in landscapes increasingly altered by anthropogenic activities.
We created seasonal and sex‐specific fixed‐kernel home range estimates to quantify seasonal home range size and utilization distribution overlap of mountain goats in southeast Alaska. We documented a high degree of range fidelity among mountain goats, which has conservation implications on a landscapes increasingly altered by anthropogenic activities.
The purpose of this study was to identify the walkable streets where traffic behavior changed according to each residential cluster during the COVID-19 pandemic. By elucidating the changes, it is ...possible to identify streets that should be redesigned following the changes in traffic behavior in relation to human mobility. This study analyzed Ibaraki City, a suburban city located in the Osaka Metropolitan Area. The analysis compared the panel data of the GPS Location History for April 2020 and April 2019. The analysis method used was Empirical Bayesian kriging. The results show that the speed significantly increased in the dense, sprawl, mountain, and old NT clusters. It was also found that the number of cyclists increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results suggest a need to design walkable streets according to each residential cluster for the post-COVID-19 pandemic era. For example, some car lanes need to be converted to bike lanes in the main neighborhood to create walkable streets in the clusters.
Predator diet composition and kill rates have to be known in order to quantify predation pressure on prey populations. While ground-truthing of GPS location clusters (GLCs) is a reliable method for ...finding large- and medium-sized prey items, finding the remains of small prey is still considered a major difficulty. In this study, we searched GLCs of Eurasian lynx
Lynx lynx
in the Northwestern Swiss Alps in order to determine if GLC analysis is a suitable method for detecting kill sites of new-born ungulates and other small prey animals. Juvenile ungulates made up 26% of the prey spectrum and 17% total consumed biomass (TCB), while hares, marmots, and red foxes accounted for 25% of all found prey items (8% TCB). Lynx spent significantly more time in GLCs containing large prey, but no clear transition in GLC duration for distinguishing between large (≥ 10 kg; mean duration = 46.9 h, SD = 30.1 h) and small prey (< 10 kg; mean duration = 26.7 h, SD = 21.1 h) could be defined. We explored the influence of different cut-off values for GLC duration on lynx diet composition. GLCs with a duration of < 9 h had less than 25% detection success, but still contained 13% of all small prey items. We conclude that GLC analysis is a promising tool for exploring predation on new-born ungulates, mesopredators, and other smaller prey animals weighing between 2 and 10 kg. However, substantial field effort is mandatory to sufficiently detect prey remains in short-lasting GLCs.
GPS location data is rapidly increasing and has become an important part of spatial information technology and its applications. In order to use K-means to discover hidden information behind GPS ...data, the drawbacks of K-means must be addressed, such as the difficulty of discovering the number of clusters, sensitivity to initial cluster center (seed) selection, and ease of falling into local optima. This paper presents a novel sharing-based niche genetic algorithm (NGA) with a novel initial population approach based on hybrid K-means to obtain the best chromosome which is then used to perform K-means clustering (termed NicheClust). SSE, DB-index, PBM-index, and COSEC are used as fitness functions for NGA. The experimental results demonstrate that NicheClust has high performance and efficiency for three GPS location datasets.
The interpretation and characterization of universal scaling laws in human mobility and activity are subjects of active research. For the better understanding, instead of the statistical approach we ...have examined the temporal patterns of human daily motion using location data. The trajectories were measured continuously and with even sampling (1 measurement per minute), using GPS and Wi-Fi/mobile Internet signals of the participant’s smartphone, we have analyzed the few-week-long signals of displacements between two subsequent samplings in frequency domain. Our results had shown that 1/
f
type noise is observable over the frequency of the daily rhythm of motion and its harmonics. We point out several technical questions about the measurement and data processing required for further detailed analysis. Furthermore, our new observation could help in the investigation of the underlying dynamics of human motion and opens several theoretical questions about the relationship between the spatial and temporal universality.
According to the size and population, Mexico City (CDMX) is one of the biggest cities in the world, making it easy to get lost and feel unsafe. This paper presents TourisMexico, a new application for ...mobile devices, Android, which aims to create audio tours in order to promote tourists to move at their own pace and safely. Also by using the tour creator, the app brings an opportunity to local users to monetize their creations. These tours can be downloaded, for an offline follow through, also the users have access to maps which facilitates their displacement. By using the mobile connection, the users have tips and interesting travel articles, left by others, tourists. The article explains each phase of the development process of TourisMexico based on the User-Centered Design methodology.
De acuerdo con su tamaño y población, la Ciudad de México (CDMX) es una de las más grandes del mundo, por lo que es fácil perderse y sentirse inseguro. Este artículo presenta TourisMexico, una nueva aplicación para dispositivos móviles, Android, la cual tiene como objetivo la creación de recorridos de audio que promuevan que el turista pueda desplazarse a su propio ritmo y de manera segura. Utilizando el creador de tours, es posible que los usuarios locales puedan obtener beneficios económicos de sus creaciones. Los recorridos pueden descargarse, además de que el usuario tiene acceso a mapas, así como una serie de consejos y artículos de viaje que han sido creados por otros turistas. El artículo explica cada etapa del proceso de desarrollo de TourisMexico basado en la metodología de Diseño Centrado en el Usuario.
The capacity to describe and quantify predation by large carnivores expanded considerably with the advent of GPS technology. Analyzing clusters of GPS locations formed by carnivores facilitates the ...detection of predation events by identifying characteristics which distinguish predation sites. We present a performance assessment of GPS cluster analysis as applied to the predation and scavenging of an omnivore, the American black bear (Ursus americanus), on ungulate prey and carrion. Through field investigations of 6854 GPS locations from 24 individual bears, we identified 54 sites where black bears formed a cluster of locations while predating or scavenging elk (Cervus elaphus), mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus), or cattle (Bos spp.). We developed models for three data sets to predict whether a GPS cluster was formed at a carnivory site vs. a non‐carnivory site (e.g., bed sites or non‐ungulate foraging sites). Two full‐season data sets contained GPS locations logged at either 3‐h or 30‐min intervals from April to November, and a third data set contained 30‐min interval data from April through July corresponding to the calving period for elk. Longer fix intervals resulted in the detection of fewer carnivory sites. Clusters were more likely to be carnivory sites if they occurred in open or edge habitats, if they occurred in the early season, if the mean distance between all pairs of GPS locations within the cluster was less, and if the cluster endured for a longer period of time. Clusters were less likely to be carnivory sites if they were initiated in the morning or night compared to the day. The top models for each data set performed well and successfully predicted 71–96% of field‐verified carnivory events, 55–75% of non–carnivory events, and 58–76% of clusters overall. Refinement of this method will benefit from further application across species and ecological systems.
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