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SHRU: Towards an indicator for animal space use
Samara Manzin, Laura Pollock, Andrew Gonzalez
The ability of animals to move freely within their home ranges is critical for access to resources, reproduction, and dispersal. However, anthropogenic pressure can have extensive impacts on movement, often resulting in reduced home ranges, limited dispersal, and in some cases, leaving populations with insufficient habitat to meet their energetic demands. Animal movement data provides a unique opportunity for us to study changes in movement and space use at a finer scale, however we are lacking a clear method through which we can use this data to systematically track change for multiple species. Biodiversity indicators are a useful tool for tracking and communicating changes over time, yet none currently focus explicitly on animal movement. Here, we present SHRU (species home range use), an indicator designed to track changes in animal home range size using movement data. Based on the modeled relationship between home range, species traits, and environmental covariates, we estimate the mean home range size for mammal species from 2000 to 2020. This allows us to predict average home range loss across entire IUCN ranges and examine the spatial structure of these losses within species distributions. SHRU provides a framework for monitoring the impacts of anthropogenic change on species space use which can be used to inform conservation planning and biodiversity management.
