Sex-Specific Patterns of Movement and Space Use in the Strawberry Poison Frog, Oophaga pumilio

• Main Author: Murasaki, Seiichi
• Format: Others
• Published: FIU Digital Commons 2010
• Subjects: Oophaga pumilio; Dendrobates; home range; minimum convex polygon; kernel density estimator
• Online Access: http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/226; http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1279&context=etd

The home range encompasses an animal’s movements as it goes about its normal activity, and several home range estimators have been developed. I evaluated the performance of the Minimum Convex Polygon, Bivariate Normal, and several kernel home range estimators in a geographical information system environment using simulations and a large database of O. pumilio mark-recapture locations. A fixed 90% kernel estimator using Least-Square Cross-Validation (to select the bandwidth) outperformed other methods of estimating home range size and was effective with relatively few capture points. Home range size, core area size, intrasexual overlap, and movement rates among coordinates were higher in female frogs than in male frogs. These measures likely reflect behavioral differences related to territoriality (males only) and parental care (both sexes). The simple Biological Index of Vagility (BIV) generated movement values that scaled well with home range size while revealing more information than home range estimates alone.