Movement Ecology最新文献

{"title":"Movement simulations reveal both memory and social information drive individual foraging site fidelity in gannets.","authors":"Christopher J Pollock, Jude V Lane, Ruth Jeavons, Victoria Warwick-Evans, Robert W Furness, Tim G Benton, Keith C Hamer","doi":"10.1186/s40462-026-00656-8","DOIUrl":"10.1186/s40462-026-00656-8","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Alongside their direct perceptions of prey, Northern gannets (Morus bassanus) likely derive foraging cues from memory of previously successful foraging areas (private information), and from conspecifics (public information). Together these mechanisms are likely to underpin emergent Individual foraging site fidelity (IFSF) patterns, characterised by individual consistency in foraging area use. Where observation methods are inadequate in helping us determine IFSF properties, simulation experiments can help decipher the implicit foraging strategies present in an organism's movements.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>We began by developing a movement simulation model to simulate spatially explicit foraging trips of chick-rearing gannets at Bass Rock, capturing direct perception of prey only. Once confidence in the foundational model was achieved, we made modifications to the model to incorporate various implementations of public and private information use in foraging strategies. The model outputs from simulations experiments, encompassing a wide range of complexity, were compared to several empirically derived patterns at the individual and population level, to gain insight into which mechanisms may be driving IFSF patterns and the potential consequences on a population's space use.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Patterns observed in standalone foraging trips were well represented by our movement simulations, permitting further developments to include public and private information use. Mechanisms using private information, namely memory based reuse of previously successful departure directions, were the primary drivers of IFSF. Incorporating social information refined these patterns, improving alignment with prey distributions and enhancing realism at the population-level, irrespective of the private information employed. However, mechanisms that best reproduced emergent individual and population level spatial patterns were associated with reduced foraging efficiency, inferred from longer trip durations and greater travel distances, indicating a trade-off between spatial segregation and short-term efficiency.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>Our results support the idea that IFSF can emerge from hierarchical foraging strategies in which long-term private information structures broad-scale space use, while social information modulates fine-scale movements. By linking behavioural mechanisms to emergent movement patterns in a spatially explicit environment, our study illustrates how individual-based models can move beyond description to generate mechanistic and predictive insights into animal movement, improving our ability to anticipate responses to environmental change.</p>","PeriodicalId":54288,"journal":{"name":"Movement Ecology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.0,"publicationDate":"2026-05-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13343878/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147943740","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Going stressed underground: corticosterone-induced stress responses alter the movement and spatial ecology of males in a fossorial reptile.","authors":"José Martín, José Javier Cuervo, Pablo Recio, Gonzalo Rodríguez-Ruiz, Isabel Barja, Pilar López","doi":"10.1186/s40462-026-00655-9","DOIUrl":"10.1186/s40462-026-00655-9","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Increased levels of physiological stress caused by environmental perturbations may alter an individual's physiological condition, which in turn may influence its movement and space-use strategies. These effects can vary depending on the environment, context, and lifestyle of each species. However, some animal groups, such as fossorial species, have been rarely examined, even though numerous environmental and anthropogenic factors can strongly affect the quality of the underground soil environment they inhabit.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>We examined how an aspect of the stress response affected the movement and spatial ecology of males in a strictly fossorial reptile, the amphisbaenian Blanus cinereus. Males were subjected to repeated, non-invasive corticosterone (CORT) supplementation, the main hormone mediating the stress response in reptiles. Then, we used passive integrated transponder (PIT) telemetry to track for 14 days the movements and space use of CORT-supplemented and control males, as well as non-CORT manipulated females, while moving undisturbed underground in outdoor seminatural enclosures. We hypothesized that experimentally elevated CORT would alter movement behavior, particularly reducing activity and space use in males.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>The CORT treatment decreased underground movement activity, distances moved, number of movements, and daily areas covered by CORT-supplemented males. However, although all males were in close proximity to females more often than toeach other, there was no effect of CORT supplementation of males on their spatial relationships (distance and proximity) with male and female conspecifics.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Repeated elevation of CORT may modify the underground movements and space use of fossorial reptiles, which may represent a strategy to compensate for the effects of glucocorticoid activation on physiological condition and energetic allocation, avoiding predation risk or the energetic costs of burrowing. Our study contributes to understanding the effects of soil environmental perturbations, such as pollution or drought, on the ecology of fossorial animals, and how these species might cope with these potential stressors.</p>","PeriodicalId":54288,"journal":{"name":"Movement Ecology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.0,"publicationDate":"2026-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13321421/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147845970","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Population-level migration modeling of North America's birds through data integration with BirdFlow.","authors":"Yangkang Chen, David L Slager, Ethan Plunkett, Miguel Fuentes, Yuting Deng, Stuart A Mackenzie, Lucas E Berrigan, Daniel Fink, Daniel Sheldon, Benjamin M Van Doren, Adriaan M Dokter","doi":"10.1186/s40462-026-00651-z","DOIUrl":"10.1186/s40462-026-00651-z","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>BACKGROUND: Accurate information on population-level movements of migratory animals is essential for understanding migration and for designing effective conservation strategies in a changing world. Yet such information remains scarce for most migratory species due to the effort and expense needed to collect data across their full distribution ranges. BirdFlow is a probabilistic modeling framework that infers population-level movements from weekly species distribution maps produced by the participatory science project eBird. However, BirdFlow models have only been tuned for a handful of species using high-resolution individual tracking data, which is not available for most migratory species. METHODS: Here, we introduce a general tuning and evaluation framework for BirdFlow that enables the first large-scale integration of distributional and individual-level data to infer animal movement across continents and hundreds of migratory species, eliminating reliance on any single individual-tracking data source. By generalizing the BirdFlow model parametrization, we enable tuning and validation using multiple complementary data sources, including GPS tracks, banding recoveries, and radio telemetry data from the Motus Wildlife Tracking System. We investigate the efficacy of this approach by (1) investigating predictive performance compared to null models; (2) validating the biological plausibility of BirdFlow models by comparing movement properties such as route straightness, number of stopovers, and migration speed between model-generated routes and real movement tracks; and (3) comparing the performance of models tuned on species-specific movement data to models tuned using hyperparameters transferred from other species. RESULTS: Our results show that BirdFlow models produced by the new tuning framework achieve biologically realistic performance, even for prediction horizons of thousands of kilometers and several months. When species-specific data are unavailable, models can still be tuned using data from other phylogenetically adjacent species to achieve improved performance. CONCLUSIONS: By integrating eBird Status & Trends abundance surfaces with data from banding recaptures, radio telemetry, and GPS tracking, we scale BirdFlow models to 153 North American migratory species, representing the first collection of continental-scale population-level movement and forecasting models. Species-specific tuning improves population-level movement forecasts, while taxonomically informed hyperparameter transfer supports the modeling of data-limited species. Overall, our work offers a foundation for more accurate predictions across hundreds of species for research in ecology and conservation, disease surveillance, aviation, and public outreach. </p>","PeriodicalId":54288,"journal":{"name":"Movement Ecology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.0,"publicationDate":"2026-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13285298/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147823226","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The fence interface effect: how altered herbivore movement creates a soil bacterial diversity hotspot.","authors":"Xinzhou Zhao, Fujiang Hou","doi":"10.1186/s40462-026-00652-y","DOIUrl":"10.1186/s40462-026-00652-y","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>BACKGROUND: Anthropogenic structures like fences are typically viewed as barriers that impede animal movement, but their cascading effects on the dispersal and diversity of other organisms remain a critical knowledge gap. This study introduces and tests the Fence Interface Effect, a hypothesis positing that by modifying herbivore foraging movements, fences create localized biodiversity hotspots. We aimed to understand the patterns, mechanisms, and consequences of this movement-driven phenomenon on belowground communities. METHODS: The study was conducted along a 23-year-old fence separating grazed and ungrazed paddocks in a typical steppe ecosystem. We established transects parallel to the fence and collected soil and plant samples at precise distances (0, 0.5, 1, 2, 3, 5, 10 m) on both sides. Plant communities were assessed by functional group. Soil bacterial communities were characterized using 16 S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing. We used linear mixed-effects models (LMMs) to model diversity patterns along the distance gradient and employed a partial least squares path model to elucidate the mechanistic pathways linking livestock movement restriction, plant functional groups, abiotic factors, and bacterial diversity. RESULTS: We discovered a significant Fence Interface Effect: soil bacterial richness, Shannon diversity, and functional potential peaked sharply at the fence line (0 m) and decayed with increasing distance into both grazed and ungrazed areas. Path analysis confirmed that this pattern was mechanistically driven by a cascade originating from altered livestock movement. This restriction facilitated the dispersal and establishment of specific plant functional groups (e.g., root-sprouting species, non-legume forbs), which, along with altered soil microclimate and mitigated physical stress, directly and positively influenced bacterial diversity. A significant portion of the bacterial community (53.8% of phyla) was up-regulated at the interface. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings reframe static fences as dynamic modulators of multi-trophic movement. By restricting the movement of large herbivores, fences create predictable spatial patterns of belowground biodiversity through a cascade of secondary dispersal and filtering events. This Fence Interface Effect represents a novel mechanism in movement ecology, demonstrating how anthropogenic boundaries can unexpectedly foster biodiversity. These insights offer a new perspective for managing human-dominated landscapes to conserve cryptic biodiversity. </p>","PeriodicalId":54288,"journal":{"name":"Movement Ecology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.0,"publicationDate":"2026-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13277183/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147823317","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Biotic and abiotic factors drive circadian migration patterns in Northern pintails across the Eurasian flyway.","authors":"Devon Cevenini, Daniele Baroni, Jacopo G Cecere, Lucio Panzarin, Marco Basso, Alessandro Franzoi, Fernando Spina, Simone Pirrello, Federico De Pascalis, Simona Imperio, Andrea Pilastro, Lorenzo Serra","doi":"10.1186/s40462-026-00659-5","DOIUrl":"10.1186/s40462-026-00659-5","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Migratory birds crossing large ecological barriers can exhibit significant plasticity in their circadian movement patterns, e.g., shifting from nocturnal to continuous flight over seas. But substantial plasticity in the circadian patterns of active migration has also been reported in other birds, such as most intra-Palearctic dabbling ducks, that do not face major ecological barriers en route. Yet, the factors driving such behavioural variation in these species remain poorly understood.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>We investigated how biotic and abiotic factors influenced circadian movement patterns and seasonal migratory schedules during pre-breeding migration of GPS-tracked Northern pintails (Anas acuta) tagged in late winter in northern Adriatic wetlands (Italy) and migrating across Eurasia towards their breeding areas. We classified behaviours from GPS data and estimated the probability of being in active migration as a function of biome, altitude of the sun above the horizon, average ground temperature, and orthodromic distance from the breeding site.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>While showing a consistent preference for conditions of low (and decreasing) sun altitude throughout migration (n = 22 pintails, n = 25 complete migration events), we observed a gradual shift towards diurnal flight along the movement path, with the level of diurnality varying according to the specific biome encountered and, likely, to the potential exposure to predators in forested areas, across latitudes. Stopovers were longer in the first half of migration and shorter and more frequent as pintails neared the breeding grounds (located mainly in the Russian Arctic). Although active migration segments were covered at very high speeds, the overall migration pace was consistently slow, suggesting a tendency to follow seasonal cues en route.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Our study provided evidence that circadian migration patterns and seasonal migratory schedules in pintails were continuously adjusted in response to the environmental conditions encountered during migration. This variation was not solely due to the steep reduction in dark hours as individuals migrated northeast, nor to the increasing urgency to reach the breeding grounds. Rather, it likely resulted from an adaptation to ecological contexts favouring daytime migration, counteracted by the necessity of waiting for environmental conditions to become suitable for breeding.</p>","PeriodicalId":54288,"journal":{"name":"Movement Ecology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.0,"publicationDate":"2026-04-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13267370/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147789086","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Specializing in order to generalize: fidelity to foraging areas is modulated by flexible fine-scale habitat use in Hudsonian Whimbrel (Numenius hudsonicus).","authors":"Maina C Handmaker, Felicia J Sanders, Madelyn B Kaplin, Adam D Smith, Ethan P Shealy, Natasza Fontaine, Janet M Thibault, Mary Catherine Martin, Camille Duquet, Abby V Sterling, Nathan R Senner","doi":"10.1186/s40462-026-00649-7","DOIUrl":"10.1186/s40462-026-00649-7","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>BACKGROUND: Many mobile organisms exhibit fidelity to specific foraging areas across seasons and years. Those that are both site faithful and habitat specialists may be particularly vulnerable to habitat loss and disturbance, as they may be less able to adjust their habitat use in response to environmental change. However, site fidelity can sometimes be a strategy to maximize efficiency via site familiarity rather than specialization, enabling more flexible habitat use at finer spatial scales. METHODS: We used high-resolution GPS tracking data, remote sensing imagery, and focal foraging observations to measure individual habitat specialization and its potential tradeoffs in Hudsonian Whimbrel (Numenius hudsonicus), a species that exhibits high individual foraging site fidelity in a spatiotemporally patchy intertidal environment during a month-long migratory stopover. RESULTS: We found that Whimbrel show low levels of habitat specialization and instead select habitat in proportion to its availability within their home range and its accessibility based on tidal inundation. Each habitat type, however, has associated tradeoffs between accessibility, foraging reward, and predation risk. Flexible habitat use is therefore likely a means to balance these tradeoffs. CONCLUSIONS: We posit that fidelity at the home range scale allows individuals to develop familiarity with how to balance habitat quality tradeoffs in a dynamic environment. While this inherent behavioral flexibility could buffer Hudsonian Whimbrel from the risks of environmental change, their reliance on low-lying intertidal habitats raises concerns as sea-level rise increasingly restricts the availability of their preferred foraging habitats. More broadly, investigating the interplay between fidelity and flexibility is critical for assessing how site-faithful species might cope with rapidly changing environments. </p>","PeriodicalId":54288,"journal":{"name":"Movement Ecology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.0,"publicationDate":"2026-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13255295/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147789324","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Beyond migrants and residents: complex partial migrations in differentially migrating shortnose sturgeon.","authors":"Joseph D Nolan, Ellen Waldrop, William C Post, Daniel J Farrae, Tanya L Darden, Evan C Ingram, Adam G Fox, Martin J Hamel","doi":"10.1186/s40462-026-00653-x","DOIUrl":"10.1186/s40462-026-00653-x","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>BACKGROUND: Partial migration refers to populations that contain both resident and migrant individuals. Partially migratory populations exhibit broad behavioral plasticity, with individual variation stemming from a combination of environmental influences, inheritable genetics, and sexual dimorphism. The United States federally endangered shortnose sturgeon (Acipenser brevirostrum) have been observed to form partially migratory populations in the Gulf of Maine, with sex-biased migration behavior and complex differential timing. However, migrations in southern populations are poorly understood, as are the influences behind migratory life history determination for this species. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the spatiotemporal characteristics and influences of partial migration behaviors in several shortnose sturgeon populations in the southern extent of its range. METHODS: Long-term (2011–2024) acoustic telemetry data from shortnose sturgeon across the southern United States (i.e., Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina) were used to identify behaviorally distinct migratory contingents using an analysis of similarities with several migration metrics and residency indices. Population- and sex-level influences on migratory life history determination were then assessed using generalized linear and multinomial models. RESULTS: Multiple behavioral contingents were present within both the migratory and resident groups of southern shortnose sturgeon spawning populations. Individuals classified as resident did not move to other rivers, and differential behaviors between resident contingents were observed where some fish traveled into the lower river and connected estuarine/coastal environments of their spawning river system while others remained upriver. Migrants were detected in at least one river system beyond their putative spawning river, and differential behaviors between migrant contingents related to residency patterns, connectivity, and travel distances during coastal inter-river migration. Furthermore, females had a greater probability of being migratory than males, and larger populations displayed more migratory life histories than smaller populations. CONCLUSIONS: Shortnose sturgeon populations in the southern United States exhibited extensive behavioral plasticity, with sex- and population-level influences on migratory life history determination. Behavioral diversity is critical for stability and persistence of partially migrating populations, and our study demonstrates such behavioral complexity for shortnose sturgeon. Species management must account for the rull range of migratory capabilities observed in our study. </p>","PeriodicalId":54288,"journal":{"name":"Movement Ecology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.0,"publicationDate":"2026-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13255447/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147789110","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Heart rate biologgers reveal individual-specific energy landscapes for mule deer.","authors":"Michel P Laforge, Mark A Ditmer, David C Stoner, Virginia Stout, Kent R Hersey, Kezia R Manlove, Randy T Larsen, Brock R McMillan, Timothy G Laske, George Wittemyer","doi":"10.1186/s40462-026-00654-w","DOIUrl":"10.1186/s40462-026-00654-w","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>BACKGROUND: An important, yet often overlooked component of animal movement behaviour is the physiological cost incurred by animals when travelling through an environment, i.e., the “energy landscape”. These include the costs related to movement rate and elevation gain, as well as the mediating influence of variation in cover types and substrate. These costs are likely to be mediated by differences among individuals, with body condition and age likely to modify energy expenditure. METHODS: Using subcutaneous biologgers paired with GPS collars (n = 37), we recorded high-resolution heart rate data from free-ranging mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) across three study sites in Utah, USA. We generated energy landscapes for mule deer by combining heart rate data with the attributes of movement steps derived from GPS locations to quantify how movement and landscape characteristics influenced heart rate, a proxy for energy expenditure. RESULTS: Overall, heart rates were higher in summer than in winter. Energy landscapes for mule deer were driven by step length and elevation gain, which increased deer heart rates. We also found a pronounced effect of movement state (encamped versus travelling) on heart rates, suggesting that initiating movement resulted in a larger increase in heart rate compared to distance travelled once movement was initiated. Deer in poorer body condition had an increased average heart rate in winter, as did heavier deer and younger deer. We found a novel trade-off in deer step selection, where deer were more likely to take steps that were energetically costly (associated with an elevated heart rate) when those steps had higher forage quality, suggesting a mediating influence of the energy landscape on forage selection by mule deer. CONCLUSIONS: Our study highlights the value of quantifying energy landscapes in the field, by revealing how individual energy landscapes can drive movement behaviour decisions and a novel trade-off between energy expenditure and forage quality. </p>","PeriodicalId":54288,"journal":{"name":"Movement Ecology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.0,"publicationDate":"2026-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13255350/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147789328","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The 'aukward' use of hidden Markov models in a pursuit-diving seabird: semi-supervised HMMs improve behavioural classification and energetic inference in auks.","authors":"Astrid Dedieu, Sam L Cox, Jamie Darby, Manon Clairbaux, Mark Jessopp","doi":"10.1186/s40462-026-00658-6","DOIUrl":"10.1186/s40462-026-00658-6","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Global seabird declines underline the need for accurate behavioural inference at sea to guide conservation. For pursuit-diving species such as auks, differentiating between resting and foraging is difficult due to similar above-water movement patterns, biasing estimates of behaviour-specific habitat use and energy expenditure. We deployed combined GPS-time depth recorders on 28 puffins during the 2021, 2023, and 2024 breeding seasons and compared inferred behaviours using outputs from GPS-only, dive-informed, semi and fully supervised hidden Markov models (HMMs) using state forcing rules. GPS-only and dive-informed models routinely conflated resting/drifting and foraging behaviours. The semi-supervised model best distinguished behavioural states, identifying 89% of track segments containing at least one dive as foraging, providing a more conservative approach compared to the supervised model when classifying transit, while avoiding inflating the number of foraging for segments with large step lengths. Compared to the GPS-only model, used here as baseline, the dive-informed model provided greater estimates of energetic expenditure by 12–21% relative to the models using forcing rules. Integrating dive data into a semi-supervised HMM refines behavioural classification, enabling more realistic energy budgets and precise mapping of important behaviour-specific habitats for conservation planning.</p>","PeriodicalId":54288,"journal":{"name":"Movement Ecology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.0,"publicationDate":"2026-04-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13255275/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147789286","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Assessment of goose-beaked whale responses to mid-frequency active sonar using a hierarchical hidden Markov model.","authors":"Stacy L DeRuiter, Erin A Falcone, Shannon N Coates, Brenda K Rone, David A Sweeney, Karin A Dolan, Susan M Jarvis, Russel D Andrews, Stephanie L Watwood, Gregory S Schorr","doi":"10.1186/s40462-026-00647-9","DOIUrl":"10.1186/s40462-026-00647-9","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>BACKGROUND: Acoustic disturbance is increasingly recognized as an ecological concern, particularly at sea. In light of marine mammal stranding events associated with use of naval mid-frequency active sonar (MFAS), which often involve goose-beaked whales (Ziphius cavirostris), research has sought to detect and characterize Ziphius behavioral responses to MFAS. METHODS: We deployed Sound and Motion Recording and Telemetry (SMRT) tags on 13 Ziphius in the Southern California Bight. The study area includes the United States Navy’s Southern California Anti-submarine Warfare Range (SOAR), and deployments overlapped temporally with training exercises including MFAS use. We used hierarchical hidden Markov models (HHMMs), which provided a framework to model whale behavior and putative responses to MFAS at two relevant time scales: foraging dive cycles, which may last hours, and five-minute intervals, where finer-scale changes in movement and behavior are evident. RESULTS: We analyzed 70.7 days of tag data (1697.6 h) representing 361 Ziphius foraging dive cycles, 52 with MFAS detections. Cumulative MFAS sound energy level (cSEL) per dive cycle was 69.9–160.3 dB re 1µPa2s (median 121.3, inter-quartile range (IQR) 21.7). We identified two dive-cycle states: “Typical” and “Variant.” In Variant state, durations of dive cycles, foraging dives, non-foraging dives, and echolocation periods were shorter on average but more variable, while time spent near the surface and net distance traveled were longer and more variable. According to Akaike’s information criterion (AIC), MFAS cSEL (rather than per-sound maximum received level) increased the probability of switching from Typical to Variant dive-cycle state, with MFAS cSEL also modulating transition rates between four fine-scale behavior states during Variant dive cycles only. Whales transitioned to Variant state in 12 of 52 MFAS-exposed dive cycles (23.1%), with observed Variant state dwell times ranging from 1 to 72.4 h (median 9.0, IQR 9.2). CONCLUSIONS: This work has relevance for conservation and management, enhancing our understanding of Ziphius behavioral responses to operational MFAS in an area where naval training activities occur regularly. These analysis tools may prove useful in assessing responses to other acoustic disturbance and understanding how shorter-term behavior changes translate to longer-term consequences. </p>","PeriodicalId":54288,"journal":{"name":"Movement Ecology","volume":"14 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.0,"publicationDate":"2026-04-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13107642/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147789258","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}