On quantifying insect movements

Journal Article · Sun Aug 01 00:00:00 EDT 1993 · Environmental Entomology; (United States)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1093/ee/22.4.709· OSTI ID:5981215

Wiens, J A; Crist, T O ^[1]; Milne, B T ^[2]

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1. Colorado State Univ., Fort Collins (United States)
2. Univ. of New Mexico, Albuquerque (United States)

We elaborate on methods described by Turchin, Odendaal Rausher for quantifying insect movement pathways. We note the need to scale measurement resolution to the study insects and the questions being asked, and we discuss the use of surveying instrumentation for recording sequential positions of individuals on pathways. We itemize several measures that may be used to characterize movement pathways and illustrate these by comparisons among several Eleodes beetles occurring in shortgrass steppe. The fractal dimension of pathways may provide insights not available from absolute measures of pathway configuration. Finally, we describe a renormalization procedure that may be used to remove sequential interdependence among locations of moving individuals while preserving the basic attributes of the pathway.

• OSTI ID: 5981215
• Journal Information: Environmental Entomology; (United States), Vol. 22:4; ISSN 0046-225X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
BEETLES
BEHAVIOR
INSECT DISPERSAL
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
RANGELANDS
RENORMALIZATION
ANIMALS
ARTHROPODS
COLEOPTERA
ECOSYSTEMS
INSECTS
INVERTEBRATES
TERRESTRIAL ECOSYSTEMS
550100* - Behavioral Biology