For example, by statistically analyzing the interrelationships of relocation data among individuals, it will be possible to distinguish and quantify population-level movement patterns such as migration, range residency, and nomadism.

intra-individual concordance

This project will develop new and innovative data management and analysis tools focusing on the interrelationship of multiple moving individuals. These include measures that calculate 1) realized mobility (quantifying the relationship of individual to population ranges), 2) population dispersion (quantifying the spatial relationship among individuals), 3) movement coordination (quantifying the coordination of movements among individuals), and 4) intra-individual concordance (quantifying the spatial relationship of relocations of individuals over time). These innovative ways of treating animal movement data will allow researchers to investigate a broad range of new research questions.

but scientists' understanding of the emergent spatial dynamics at the population level has not kept pace, in large part due to an absence of appropriate tools for data handling and statistical analysis.

A grant is awarded to University of Maryland, College Park to develop informatics tools that allow scientists and conservation managers to use animal relocation and tracking data to study movement processes at the population level.

News Thomas Mueller and Bill Fagan receive a new NSF Bioinformatics grant Collaborators Peter Leimgruber Smithsonian Institution Volker Grimm Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ, Leipzig Kirk A. Olson University of Massachusetts Todd K. Fuller University of Massachusetts George B. Schaller Wildlife Conservation Society Nuria Selva Institute of Nature Conservation, Krakow