Modelling Analysis

When Ranges 4 was launched in 1990, individual-based modelling of animal populations was in its infancy. However, it was becoming clear that not only was such modelling powerful for predicting population beyond the envelope of conditions in which individuals were measured, but also that radio-tracking could provide the linkages of habitats and sociality with persistence or dispersal, and survival and productivity, that would be needed for modelling. So the provision of a toolkit for modelling was a long-term aspiration for this type of software (Kenward 1992).

Introduction

The initial contribution to modelling is a new approach to analysing resources, such as habitats, which can estimate minimal requirements of individual animals and hence enable individual-based modelling. There is also a method for estimating survival or dispersal rates that is convenient for data from radio-tagging. There are illustrated explanations of both methods in (Kenward 2001). Further components of a toolkit for modelling will be added to this tab in due course, with the ultimate aspiration of linking these in order to automate population modelling from location data and maps.