Seminar Series - Dr. Mevin Hooten

The Spring 2023 SDS Seminar Series continues on Friday, March 31st from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. with Dr. Mevin Hooten (Professor at the University of Texas). This event is in-person, but a virtual option will be available as well

Title: Running on Empty:  Recharge Dynamics from Animal Movement Data

Abstract:  Vital rates such as survival and recruitment have always been important in the study of population and community ecology.  At the individual level for wild animals, physiological processes such as energetics are critical in understanding biomechanics and movement ecology and also scale up to influence food webs.  Commonly used statistical models for telemetry data lack an explicit, mechanistic connection to physiological dynamics.  I describe a framework for modeling telemetry data that includes an aggregated physiological process associated with decision making and movement in heterogeneous environments. This framework accommodates a wide range of movement and physiological process specifications.  As an example, I present a model formulation for animal trajectories in continuous time that provides direct inference about gains and losses associated with physiological processes based on movement. The approach can also be extended to accommodate auxiliary data when available. I demonstrate the model to infer wild felid and ungulate recharge dynamics.