[In Korean] Animal Home Range Estimators – A Review and a Case Study

Animals exhibit certain behaviors and movement patterns as they react to their internal needs, external stimuli, and surrounding environments. They have a bounded range in which they mostly spend their time, and it is referred to as a home range. Based on the fact that the home range is a critical area for the survival and preservation of species, there has been a growing body of research on developing more precise home range estimation methods to use the estimated ranges as a ground for establishing an effective conservation policy since the early 1940s. Recent rapid advancements in telemetry technology that resulted in the presence of autocorrelation between locations with short time intervals revealed the limitations of the existing estimators. Many novel estimators have been developed to compensate for it by incorporating autocorrelation in calculating home ranges. However, studies on the animal home range are still in their early stage in Korea, and newly developed methodologies have not yet been adopted. Therefore, this study aims to introduce the foreign home range estimation methods and foster domestic research activities on home ranges. Firstly, we compared and contemplated seven estimators by categorizing them into geometrical and statistical methodologies and then divided them into estimators that assume independent observations and those that consider autocorrelation in each category. After that, the home ranges of black-tailed gulls (Larus crassirostris) were calculated using GPS tracking data for the month of June and derived home range estimators by applying the methodology introduced in this study. We analyzed and compared the results to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each method. Lastly, we proposed a guideline that can help researchers choose an appropriate estimator for home range calculation based on the animal location data characteristics and analysis purpose.