Dissertations and Theses

Date of Award

2021

Document Type

Thesis

Department

Biology

First Advisor

Andrea L. Baden

Second Advisor

Amy Berkov

Third Advisor

Osceola Whitney

Keywords

Home range, animal movement ecology, ArcGIS, ctmm, 3D terrian

Abstract

This study investigates black-and-white ruffed lemur (Varecia variegata) space use and movement using autocorrelated kernel density estimation (AKDE), a new methodology available from the continuous-time movement model (ctmm) package in R. Data were collected from 24 adults and subadults (10 males, 11 females, 3 subadult males) living in two adjacent V. variegata communities at Mangevo bush camp in Ranomafana National Park, Madagascar (RNP) for 11 months (February – December 2008) to estimate annual and seasonal patterns of individual and community-level range use. Autocorrelated kernel density estimates generated in this study are compared to earlier kernel density estimates from Baden et al. (2021) to determine whether and to what extent the same patterns emerge. Patterns of annual and seasonal variation are also compared across i) age-sex class, ii) reproductive seasonality, iii) site topography and iv) resource availability and distribution.

Results reveal that both annual and seasonal home range size and spatial use varied between males and females, as well as within subgroups. Females exhibited larger annual home ranges than males, though not significantly so, and ranging behaviors varied by reproductive season. The topography of Mangevo appears to be a significant driver of range use, as mountain ridges, community boundaries (i.e., territorial space use), and neighborhoods are all structured around the distribution of food resources which are situated primarily at lower elevations between ridgelines throughout the ruffed lemur community.

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