The challenges of linking movement and population dynamics

MORALES, JUAN M.

Conferencia; RCN FORECAST New Investigators Conference 2012: New perspectives on data assimilation in global change science; 2012

New data collection tools allows for the availability of detailed tracking of animal location concurrently with acquisition of landscape data and information on individual physiology. These data opens the possibility to refine our understanding of the mechanistic links between behavior and population dynamics through movement models where time allocation to different behaviors affects individual survival and reproduction. State-space models fitted using MCMC or Approximate Bayesian Computations are promising methodologies to deal with this data. There are technical challenges related to the speed of the data fitting procedures and conceptual ones around what to use as currency for model evaluation and comparison. What is critically needed however is to figure out what details of animal movement are relevant to population dynamics in changing environments. I will outline and discuss possible ways to address this issue.