Estimating resource selection from telemetry data: A case study on northern fur seals.

Speaker: Dr Devin Johnson (NOAA, Alaska Fisheries Science Center) (NOAA, Alaska Fisheries Science Center)

Abstract

After a brief tour of northern fur seal ecology and traditional resource selection models for telemetry data, we will examine a new approach based on modeling animal movements in a pixelated landscape. These discrete-space continuous time models allow inclusion of spatial habitat information in a way that does not depend on the rate of location acquisition. Therefore as telemetry devices improve, and locations are measured at finer time scales, the inference remains comparable. These models also allow spatial and temporal habitat covariates and temporally changing responses by the animal. One of the major benefits of the model is that the likelihood can be approximated with a Poisson likelihood, therefore, any GLM software can be used to fit the model, such as glm(…) or gam(…) in the R statistical environment. The methodology is demonstrated by analyzing the movements of 15 northern fur seal pups on their first migration with respect to surface winds, geostrophic currents, and sea surface temperature.