NSF Advances in Biological Informatics: "Informatics tools for population-level animal movements." with T. Mueller, P. Leimgruber, A. Royle, and J. Calabrese. Thomas Mueller, an Assistant Research Scientist in my lab, leads this project. Also on this grant, postdoc Chris Fleming is investigating theoretical aspects of animal foraging and statistical issues associated with empirical data on animal movements. This project is developing innovative data management and analysis tools that will allow scientists and conservation managers to use animal relocation and tracking data to study movement processes at the population-level, focusing on the interrelationship of multiple moving individuals. We are developing and testing these new tools using datasets on Mongolian gazelles, whooping cranes, and blacktip sharks. More information is available on the Movement Dynamics Homepage.

My project seeks to develop computer models that simulate and link behavioral movement mechanisms which can be either based on memory, perceptual cues or triggered by environmental factors. It explores their efficiency under different scenarios of resource distributions across time and space. Finally it tries to integrate empirical data on resource distributions as well as movements of moving animals, such as satellite data on primary productivity and satellite tracking data of Mongolian gazelles.