What is "home range"

n. the area in which an animal normally ranges [syn: home territory]

A home range is the area in which an animal lives and moves on a periodic basis. It is related to the concept of an animal's territory which is the area that is actively defended. The concept of a home range was introduced by W. H. Burt in 1943. He drew maps showing where the animal had been observed at different times. An associated concept is the utilization distribution which examines where the animal is likely to be at any given time. Data for mapping a home range used to be gathered by careful observation, but nowadays, the animal is fitted with a transmission collar or similar GPS device.

The simplest way of measuring the home range is to construct the smallest possible convex polygon around the data but this tends to overestimate the range. The best known methods for constructing utilization distributions are the so-called bivariate Gaussian or normal distribution kernel density methods. More recently, nonparametric methods such as the Burgman and Fox's alpha-hull and Getz and Wilmers local convex hull have been used. Software is available for using both parametric and nonparametric kernel methods.