Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

The spatial scaling and individuality of habitat selection in a widespread ungulate

  • Research Article
  • Published:
Landscape Ecology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Context

Animal-habitat relationships tend to manifest at specific spatial scales. Accurately identifying these scales and accounting for the variance in habitat selection across them is crucial for linking habitat selection patterns to the ecological processes giving rise to them. Although this fundamental issue has long been recognized, it has been seldom addressed empirically in habitat selection studies.

Objectives

In this study, we investigated how spatial scale influences the outputs of habitat selection analyses. Furthermore, we examined whether the effect of spatial scale varies among individual animals and whether these effects could be predicted via intrinsic or extrinsic factors.

Methods

We used a dataset collected from 485 GPS-collared white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) across three study sites in Missouri, USA to model habitat selection at 65 spatial scales from 900 m2 to 15 km2 using integrated step selection functions. To investigate potential drivers of spatial scaling we used multiple linear regression to model how scale of effect, defined as the spatial scale at which model AIC was minimized, could be predicted by intrinsic (age, sex, and home range size) and extrinsic factors (study site, season, mean percentage forest in home range, mean distance to nearest road in home range).

Results

Scale of effect varied substantially among individuals, and individual variation in scale of effect was predicted by home range size, study site, and proportion of forest within a home range. In contrast, other intrinsic and extrinsic factors had little to no relationship with scale of effect. Parameter coefficients for forest cover and distance to nearest road varied strongly with opposing directionality of responses across spatial scales, revealing that spatial scale may bias habitat selection analyses. Coefficients were both positive and negative at different scales for an average of 63.2%individuals, and no single spatial scale resulted in the scale of effect more than 9.0% of the time.

Conclusions

Our study demonstrates that spatial scale can strongly influence model parameter coefficients, thereby raising questions about the conventional interpretation of habitat selection analyses. We discuss outstanding issues regarding the comparability of results across study sites and the future of multi-scale habitat selection analyses.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Alfaro ME, Huelsenbeck JP (2006) Comparative performance of bayesian and AIC-based measures of phylogenetic model uncertainty. Syst Biol 55:89–96

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Allen SE et al (2019) Epizootic hemorrhagic disease in white-tailed deer Canada. Emerg Infect Dis 25:832–834

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Anderson DR, Burnham KP (2002) Avoiding pitfalls when using information-theoretic methods. J Wildl Manag 66:912–918

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Anderson TA, Johnson CJ (2014) Distribution of barren-ground caribou during winter in response to fire. Ecosphere 5:art140

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Anderson DP et al (2013) A novel approach to assess the probability of disease eradication from a wild-animal reservoir host. Epidemiol Infect 141:1509–1521

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Avgar T et al (2016) Integrated step selection analysis: bridging the gap between resource selection and animal movement. Methods Ecol Evol 7:619–630

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bastille-Rousseau G et al (2018) Spatial scales of habitat selection decisions: implications for telemetry-based movement modelling. Ecography 41:437–443

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Belsare AV et al (2021) Getting in front of chronic wasting disease: model-informed proactive approach for managing an emerging wildlife disease. Front Vet Sci 7:1154

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Benhamou S (2014) Of scales and stationarity in animal movements. Ecol Lett 17:261–272

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Benson E (2010) Wired Wilderness: technologies of tracking and the making of modern wildlife. JHU Press, Baltimore

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Bjørneraas K et al (2010) Screening global positioning system location data for errors using animal movement characteristics. J Wildl Manag 74:1361–1366

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boyce MS et al (2002) Evaluating resource selection functions. Ecol Model 157:281–300

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • U.S. Census Bureau 2019. 2019 TIGER/Line Shapefiles (machine-readable data files).

  • Decker, W. L. 2021. Climate of Missouri. Missouri Climate Center, College of Agriculture, Food, and Natural Resources, University of Missouri. http://climate.missouri.edu/climate.php. Accessed 2021

  • DelGiudice GD et al (2013) A long-term assessment of the variability in winter use of dense conifer cover by female white-tailed deer. PLoS One 8:e65368

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • DeNicola AJ et al (2000) Managing white-tailed deer in suburban environments. Cornell Cooperative Extension, Watertown

    Google Scholar 

  • di Stephano J (2003) How much power is enough? against the development of an arbitrary convention for statistical power calculations. Funct Ecol 17:707–709

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dietz MS et al (2020) An assessment of vulnerable wildlife, their habitats, and protected areas in the contiguous United States. Biol Conserv 248:108646

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dingemanse NJ et al (2010) Behavioural reaction norms: animal personality meets individual plasticity. Trends Ecol Evol 25:81–89

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Dunning JB et al (1992) Ecological processes that affect populations in complex landscapes. Oikos 65:169–175

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fagan WF et al (2013) Spatial memory and animal movement. Ecol Lett 16:1316–1329

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Farhadinia MS et al (2019) Vertical relief facilitates spatial segregation of a high density large carnivore population. Oikos 129:346–355

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fieberg J et al (2020) A “how-to” guide for interpreting parameters in resource-and step-selection analyses. bioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.11.12.379834

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fleming CH, Calabrese JM (2017) A new kernel density estimator for accurate home-range and species-range area estimation. Methods Ecol Evol 8:571–579

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Forester JD et al (2009) Accounting for animal movement in estimation of resource selection functions: sampling and data analysis. Ecology 90:3554–3565

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Froese, J. G. et al. 2015. Moving window analysis links landscape-scale resource utilization to habitat suitability models of feral pigs in northern Australia. In: T Weber, MJ McPhee, and RS Anderssen, (Eds). Modelling & Simulation Soc Australia & New Zealand Inc.

  • Gallo T et al (2018) Need for multiscale planning for conservation of urban bats. Conserv Biol 32:638–647

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Gehlke CE, Biehl K (1934) Certain effects of grouping upon the size of the correlation coefficient in census tract material. J Am Stat Assoc 29:169–170

    Google Scholar 

  • Haus JM et al (2020) Individual heterogeneity in resource selection has implications for mortality risk in white-tailed deer. Ecosphere 11:e03064

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Herse MR et al (2017) Landscape context drives breeding habitat selection by an enigmatic grassland songbird. Landsc Ecol 32:2351–2364

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hewitt DG (2011) Biology and management of white-tailed deer. CRC Press, Boca Raton

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Hiller TL et al (2009) Multi-scale cover selection by white-tailed deer, Odocoileus virginianus, in an agro-forested landscape. Can Field-Nat 123:32–43

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Holland JD et al (2004) Determining the spatial scale of species’ response to habitat. BioScience 54:227–233

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Homer C et al (2015) Completion of the 2011 National Land Cover Database for the conterminous United States—representing a decade of land cover change Information. Photogramm Eng Remote Sens 81:346–354

    Google Scholar 

  • Hurlbert AH, Jetz W (2007) Species richness, hotspots, and the scale dependence of range maps in ecology and conservation. Proc Natl Acad Sci 104:13384–13389

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Jackson HB, Fahrig L (2012) What size is a biologically relevant landscape? Landsc Ecol 27:929–941

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jackson HB, Fahrig L (2015) Are ecologists conducting research at the optimal scale? Glob Ecol Biogeogr 24:52–63

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jelinski DE, Wu J (1996) The modifiable areal unit problem and implications for landscape ecology. Landsc Ecol 11:129–140

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jesmer BR et al (2018) Is ungulate migration culturally transmitted? Evidence of social learning from translocated animals. Science 361:1023–1025

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Johnson DH (1980) The comparison of usage and availability measurements for evaluating resource preference. Ecology 61:65–71

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kammerle J-L et al (2017) Temporal patterns in road crossing behaviour in roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) at sites with wildlife warning reflectors. Plos One 12:e0184761

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Kerkhoff AJ, Enquist BJ (2009) Multiplicative by nature: why logarithmic transformation is necessary in allometry. J Theor Biol 257:519–521

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kie JG, Bowyer RT (1999) Sexual segregation in white-tailed deer: density-dependent changes in use of space, habitat selection, and dietary niche. J Mammal 80:1004–1020

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kuznetsova A et al (2020) lmerTest: Tests in Linear mixed effects models. J Stat Softw 82:1–26

    Google Scholar 

  • Laforge MP et al (2015) Process-focussed, multi-grain resource selection functions. Ecol Model 305:10–21

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Laforge MP et al (2016) Grain-dependent functional responses in habitat selection. Landsc Ecol 31:855–863

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lesage L et al (2000) Seasonal home range size and philopatry in two northern white-tailed deer populations. Can J Zool 78:11

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Levin SA (1992) The problem of pattern and scale in ecology: the Robert H MacArthur award lecture. Ecology 73:1943–1967

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Long ES et al (2005) Forest cover influences dispersal distance of white-tailed deer. J Mammal 86:623–629

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Long ES et al (2008) Multiple proximate and ultimate causes of natal dispersal in white-tailed deer. Behav Ecol 19:1235–1242

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Long ES et al (2010) Influence of roads, rivers, and mountains on natal dispersal of white-tailed deer. J Wildl Manag 74:1242–1249

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • MacNearney D et al (2016) Heading for the hills? evaluating spatial distribution of woodland caribou in response to a growing anthropogenic disturbance footprint. Ecol Evol 6:6484–6509

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Mandujano-Rodriguez S, Hernandez C (2019) Use of water developments by white-tailed deer in an extensive AHU in the biosphere reserve Tehuacan-Cuicatlan Mexico. Agroproductividad 12:37–42

    Google Scholar 

  • Mayor SJ et al (2009) Habitat selection at multiple scales. Écoscience 16:238–247

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McGarigal K et al (2016) Multi-scale habitat selection modeling: a review and outlook. Landsc Ecol 31:1161–1175

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Merkle JA et al (2014) A memory-based foraging tactic reveals an adaptive mechanism for restricted space use. Ecol Lett 17:924–931

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Michel ES et al (2020) Habitat selection of white-tailed deer fawns and their dams in the Northern Great Plains. Mammal Res 65:825–833

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Miguet P et al (2016) What determines the spatial extent of landscape effects on species? Landsc Ecol 31:1177–1194

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Millspaugh JJ et al (2006) Analysis of resource selection using utilization distributions. J Wildl Manag 70:384–395

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Milne BT (1997) Applications of fractal geometry in wildlife biology. Wildlife Landscape Ecology, pp 32–69

    Google Scholar 

  • Moll RJ et al (2020) At what spatial scale(s) do mammals respond to urbanization? Ecography 43:171–183

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moll RJ et al (2021) A rare 300 kilometer dispersal by an adult male white-tailed deer. Ecol Evol 11:3685–3695

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Montgomery RA et al (2011) Implications of ignoring telemetry error on inference in wildlife resource use models. J Wildl Manag 75:702–708

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Montgomery RA et al (2018) Evaluating the individuality of animal-habitat relationships. Ecol Evol 8:10893–10901

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Mysterud A et al (2001) The effect of season, sex and feeding style on home range area versus body mass scaling in temperate ruminants. Oecologia 127:30–39

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Nathan R et al (2008) A movement ecology paradigm for unifying organismal movement research. Proc Natl Acad Sci 105:19052–19059

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Nixon CM et al (2007) White-tailed deer dispersal behavior in an agricultural environment. Am Midl Nat 157:212–220

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Oguchi Y et al (2018) Exotic- and native-dominated shrubland habitat use by fall migrating Swainson’s Thrushes and Gray Catbirds in Michigan, USA. Condor 120:81–93

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Orians GH, Wittenberger JF (1991) Spatial and temporal scales in habitat selection. Am Nat 137:S29–S49

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Osipova L et al (2019) Using step-selection functions to model landscape connectivity for African elephants: accounting for variability across individuals and seasons. Anim Conserv 22:35–48

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Packett DL, Dunning JB Jr (2009) Stopover habitat selection by migrant landbirds in a fragmented forest-agricultural landscape. Auk 126:579–589

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Parsons BM et al (2020) Building a perceptual zone of influence for wildlife: delineating the effects of roads on grizzly bear movement. Eur J Wildl Res 66:1–16

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • R Core Team 2022. R: A language and environment for statistical computing.

  • Ripple WJ et al (2014) Status and ecological effects of the world’s largest carnivores. Science 343:1241484

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Routh MR, Nielsen SE (2021) Dynamic patterns in winter ungulate browse succession in the Boreal Plains of Alberta. For Ecol Manag 492:119242

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Scrafford MA et al (2018) Roads elicit negative movement and habitat-selection responses by wolverines (Gulo gulo luscus). Behav Ecol 29:534–542

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Signer J et al (2019) Animal movement tools (amt): R package for managing tracking data and conducting habitat selection analyses. Ecol Evol 9:880–890

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Southwick, R. 2009. The economic contributions of hunting in the United States. - Trans. Seventy-Third North Am. Wildl. Nat. Resour. Conf.: 199–211.

  • Stuber EF, Gruber LF (2020) Recent methodological solutions to identifying scales of effect in multi-scale modelling. Curr Landsc Ecol Rep 5:127–139

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stuber EF et al (2022) Spatial personalities: a meta-analysis of consistent individual differences in spatial behaviour. Behav Ecol 33:477–486

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thompson CM, McGarigal K (2002) The influence of research scale on bald eagle habitat selection along the lower Hudson River, New York (USA). Landsc Ecol 17:569–586

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thurfjell H et al (2014) Applications of step-selection functions in ecology and conservation. Mov Ecol 2:4

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Trombulak SC, Frissell CA (2000) Review of ecological effects of roads on terrestrial and aquatic communities. Conserv Biol 14:18–30

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Turner MG (1989) Landscape ecology: the effect of pattern on process | annual review of ecology, evolution, and systematics. Annu Rev Ecol Syst 20:171–197

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Van Moorter B et al (2009) Memory keeps you at home: a mechanistic model for home range emergence. Oikos 118:641–652

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wheatley M, Johnson C (2009) Factors limiting our understanding of ecological scale. Ecol CompLex 6:150–159

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wiemers DW et al (2014) Role of thermal environment in habitat selection by male white-tailed deer during summer in Texas, USA. Wildl Biol 20:47–56

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wiens JA (1989) Spatial scaling in ecology. Funct Ecol 3:385–397

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wilson KA et al (2011) Prioritizing conservation investments for mammal species globally. Philos Trans r Soc B-Biol Sci 366:2670–2680

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wright C (2018) Survival, movements, and resource selection of female white-tailed deer in Missouri. University of Montana, Missoula

    Google Scholar 

  • Wright CA et al (2019) Landscape-scale habitat characteristics and neonatal white-tailed deer survival. J Wildl Manag 83:1401–1414

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zeller KA et al (2016) Using step and path selection functions for estimating resistance to movement: pumas as a case study. Landsc Ecol 31:1319–1335

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zeller KA et al (2021) Response of female black bears to a high-density road network and identification of long-term road mitigation sites. Anim Conserv 24:167–180

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Funding

National Science Foundation, Missouri Department of Conservation, New Hampshire Agricultural Experiment Station

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Natural Resources and the Environment, College of Life Sciences and Agriculture, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, 03824, USA

    David R. Heit & Remington J. Moll

  2. Wildlife Biology Program, W.A. Franke College of Forestry, University of Montana, Missoula, MT, 59812, USA

    Joshua J. Millspaugh & Jon T. McRoberts

  3. Missouri Department of Conservation, Science Branch, 3500 East Gans Road, Columbia, MO, 65201, USA

    Kevyn H. Wiskirchen, Jason A. Sumners, Jason L. Isabelle & Aaron M. Hildreth

  4. Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, 500 Lafayette Road, St. Paul, MN, 55155, USA

    Barbara J. Keller

  5. Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, The Recanati-Kaplan Centre, Tubney House, Abingdon Road, Tubney, OX13 5QL, Oxon, UK

    Robert A. Montgomery

Authors
  1. David R. Heit
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Joshua J. Millspaugh
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Jon T. McRoberts
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Kevyn H. Wiskirchen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Jason A. Sumners
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Jason L. Isabelle
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Barbara J. Keller
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  8. Aaron M. Hildreth
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  9. Robert A. Montgomery
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  10. Remington J. Moll
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

All authors contributed to the manuscript and are warranted authorship. DRH, RJM, JJM, and RAM conceptualized the project. JJM, JTM, KHW, JAS, JLI, BJK, and AMH facilitated funding, planning, and execution of field data collection. DRH and RJM developed data analysis methods. DRH conducted data analysis and prepared all visual representations of the results. DRH wrote the initial manuscript. All authors provided reviewed and provided feedback on manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to David R. Heit.

Ethics declarations

Competing Interests

The authors have not disclosed any competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary Information

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Supplementary file1 (DOCX 182 KB)

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Heit, D.R., Millspaugh, J.J., McRoberts, J.T. et al. The spatial scaling and individuality of habitat selection in a widespread ungulate. Landsc Ecol 38, 1481–1495 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-023-01631-z

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-023-01631-z

Keywords

Search

Navigation