Journal Article
Effects of body size on estimation of mammalian area requirements
Michael J. Noonan; Christen H. Fleming; Marlee A. Tucker; Roland Kays; Autumn‐Lynn Harrison; Margaret C. Crofoot; Briana Abrahms; Susan C. Alberts; Abdullahi H. Ali; Jeanne Altmann; Pamela Castro Antunes; Nina Attias; Jerrold L. Belant; Dean E. Beyer; Laura R. Bidner; Niels Blaum; Randall B. Boone; Damien Caillaud; Rogerio Cunha de Paula; J. Antonio de la Torre; Jasja Dekker; Christopher S. DePerno; Mohammad Farhadinia; Julian Fennessy; Claudia Fichtel; Christina Fischer; Adam Ford; Jacob R. Goheen; Rasmus W. Havmøller; Ben T. Hirsch; Cindy Hurtado; Lynne A. Isbell; René Janssen; Florian Jeltsch; Petra Kaczensky; Yayoi Kaneko; Peter Kappeler; Anjan Katna; Matthew Kauffman; Flavia Koch; Abhijeet Kulkarni; Scott LaPoint; Peter Leimgruber; David W. Macdonald; A. Catherine Markham; Laura McMahon; Katherine Mertes; Christopher E. Moorman; Ronaldo G. Morato; Alexander M. Moßbrucker; Guilherme Mourão; David O'Connor; Luiz Gustavo R. Oliveira‐Santos; Jennifer Pastorini; Bruce D. Patterson; Janet Rachlow; Dustin H. Ranglack; Neil Reid; David M. Scantlebury; Dawn M. Scott; Nuria Selva; Agnieszka Sergiel; Melissa Songer; Nucharin Songsasen; Jared A. Stabach; Jenna Stacy‐Dawes; Morgan B. Swingen; Jeffrey J. Thompson; Wiebke Ullmann; Abi Tamim Vanak; Maria Thaker; John W. Wilson; Koji Yamazaki; Richard W. Yarnell; Filip Zieba; Tomasz Zwijacz‐Kozica; William F. Fagan; Thomas Mueller; Justin M. Calabrese
Conservation Biology · Vol. 34, Issue 4 · pp. 1017-1028 · 2020
Abstract
Accurately quantifying species’ area requirements is a prerequisite for effective area‐based conservation. This typically involves collecting tracking data on species of interest and then conducting home‐range analyses. Problematically, autocorrelation in tracking data can result in space needs being severely underestimated. Based on the previous work, we hypothesized the magnitude of underestimation varies with body mass, a relationship that could have serious conservation implications. To evaluate this hypothesis for terrestrial mammals, we estimated home‐range areas with global positioning system (GPS) locations from 757 individuals across 61 globally distributed mammalian species with body masses ranging from 0.4 to 4000 kg. We then applied block cross‐validation to quantify bias in empirical home‐range estimates. Area requirements of mammals 1, meaning the scaling of the relationship changed substantially at the upper end of the mass spectrum.