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Circles within spirals, wheels within wheels; Body rotation facilitates critical insights into animal behavioural ecology / RICHARD GUNNER

Swansea University Author: RICHARD GUNNER

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DOI (Published version): 10.23889/SUthesis.58403

Abstract

How animals behave is fundamental to enhancing their lifetime fitness, so defining how animals move in space and time relates to many ecological questions, including resource selection, activity budgets and animal movement networks. Historically, animal behaviour and movement has been defined by dir...

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Published: Swansea 2021
Institution: Swansea University
Degree level: Doctoral
Degree name: Ph.D
Supervisor: Wilson, Rory P. ; Shepard, Emily L.C. ; Börger, Luca
URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa58403
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first_indexed 2021-10-19T10:53:50Z
last_indexed 2021-10-20T03:24:00Z
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spelling 2021-10-19T12:28:32.1122626 v2 58403 2021-10-19 Circles within spirals, wheels within wheels; Body rotation facilitates critical insights into animal behavioural ecology 7ab819f2ff8b287f7b814a7351f4f7bf RICHARD GUNNER RICHARD GUNNER true false 2021-10-19 How animals behave is fundamental to enhancing their lifetime fitness, so defining how animals move in space and time relates to many ecological questions, including resource selection, activity budgets and animal movement networks. Historically, animal behaviour and movement has been defined by direct observation, however recent advancements in biotelemetry have revolutionised how we now assess behaviour, particularly allowing animals to be monitored when they cannot be seen. Studies now pair ‘convectional’ radio telemetries with motion sensors to facilitate more detailed investigations of animal space-use. Motion sensitive tags (containing e.g., accelerometers and magnetometers) provide precise data on body movements which characterise behaviour, and this has been exemplified in extensive studies using accelerometery data, which has been linked to space-use defined by GPS. Conversely, consideration of body rotation (particularly change in yaw) is virtually absent within the biologging literature, even though various scales of yaw rotation can reveal important patterns in behaviour and movement, with animal heading being a fundamental component characterising space-use. This thesis explores animal body angles, particularly about the yaw axis, for elucidating animal movement ecology. I used five model species (a reptile, a mammal and three birds) to demonstrate the value of assessing body rotation for investigating fine-scale movement-specific behaviours. As part of this, I advanced the ‘dead-reckoning’ method, where fine-scale animal movement between temporally poorly resolved GPS fixes can be deduced using heading vectors and speed. I addressed many issues with this protocol, highlighting errors and potential solutions but was able to show how this approach leads to insights into many difficult-to-study animal behaviours. These ranged from elucidating how and where lions cross supposedly impermeable man-made barriers to examining how penguins react to tidal currents and then navigate their way to their nests far from the sea in colonies enclosed within thick vegetation. E-Thesis Swansea Accelerometer, Angular velocity, Animal behaviour, Animal heading, Dead-reckoning, Global Positioning System (GPS), Magnetometer 19 10 2021 2021-10-19 10.23889/SUthesis.58403 ORCiD identifier: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2054-9944 COLLEGE NANME COLLEGE CODE Swansea University Wilson, Rory P. ; Shepard, Emily L.C. ; Börger, Luca Doctoral Ph.D This thesis contributes to the Coupled Animal and Artificial Sensing of the Environment (CAASE) project funded by King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) under the KAUST Sensor Initiative; Grant CAASE-SI 2021-10-19T12:28:32.1122626 2021-10-19T11:48:39.8523714 Faculty of Science and Engineering School of Biosciences, Geography and Physics - Biosciences RICHARD GUNNER 1 58403__21221__c74770490fd64ff6953fc47c9868b17e.pdf Gunner_Richard_M_PhD_Thesis_Final_Redacted_Signature.pdf 2021-10-19T12:07:35.1472324 Output 23582867 application/pdf E-Thesis – open access true Copyright: The author, Richard Michael Gunner, 2021. true eng
title Circles within spirals, wheels within wheels; Body rotation facilitates critical insights into animal behavioural ecology
spellingShingle Circles within spirals, wheels within wheels; Body rotation facilitates critical insights into animal behavioural ecology
RICHARD GUNNER
title_short Circles within spirals, wheels within wheels; Body rotation facilitates critical insights into animal behavioural ecology
title_full Circles within spirals, wheels within wheels; Body rotation facilitates critical insights into animal behavioural ecology
title_fullStr Circles within spirals, wheels within wheels; Body rotation facilitates critical insights into animal behavioural ecology
title_full_unstemmed Circles within spirals, wheels within wheels; Body rotation facilitates critical insights into animal behavioural ecology
title_sort Circles within spirals, wheels within wheels; Body rotation facilitates critical insights into animal behavioural ecology
author_id_str_mv 7ab819f2ff8b287f7b814a7351f4f7bf
author_id_fullname_str_mv 7ab819f2ff8b287f7b814a7351f4f7bf_***_RICHARD GUNNER
author RICHARD GUNNER
author2 RICHARD GUNNER
format E-Thesis
publishDate 2021
institution Swansea University
doi_str_mv 10.23889/SUthesis.58403
college_str Faculty of Science and Engineering
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hierarchy_top_id facultyofscienceandengineering
hierarchy_top_title Faculty of Science and Engineering
hierarchy_parent_id facultyofscienceandengineering
hierarchy_parent_title Faculty of Science and Engineering
department_str School of Biosciences, Geography and Physics - Biosciences{{{_:::_}}}Faculty of Science and Engineering{{{_:::_}}}School of Biosciences, Geography and Physics - Biosciences
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description How animals behave is fundamental to enhancing their lifetime fitness, so defining how animals move in space and time relates to many ecological questions, including resource selection, activity budgets and animal movement networks. Historically, animal behaviour and movement has been defined by direct observation, however recent advancements in biotelemetry have revolutionised how we now assess behaviour, particularly allowing animals to be monitored when they cannot be seen. Studies now pair ‘convectional’ radio telemetries with motion sensors to facilitate more detailed investigations of animal space-use. Motion sensitive tags (containing e.g., accelerometers and magnetometers) provide precise data on body movements which characterise behaviour, and this has been exemplified in extensive studies using accelerometery data, which has been linked to space-use defined by GPS. Conversely, consideration of body rotation (particularly change in yaw) is virtually absent within the biologging literature, even though various scales of yaw rotation can reveal important patterns in behaviour and movement, with animal heading being a fundamental component characterising space-use. This thesis explores animal body angles, particularly about the yaw axis, for elucidating animal movement ecology. I used five model species (a reptile, a mammal and three birds) to demonstrate the value of assessing body rotation for investigating fine-scale movement-specific behaviours. As part of this, I advanced the ‘dead-reckoning’ method, where fine-scale animal movement between temporally poorly resolved GPS fixes can be deduced using heading vectors and speed. I addressed many issues with this protocol, highlighting errors and potential solutions but was able to show how this approach leads to insights into many difficult-to-study animal behaviours. These ranged from elucidating how and where lions cross supposedly impermeable man-made barriers to examining how penguins react to tidal currents and then navigate their way to their nests far from the sea in colonies enclosed within thick vegetation.
published_date 2021-10-19T04:14:54Z
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score 11.000751

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