Scandinavian carnivores: from individual decisions to spatio-temporal dynamics

Animal movement has important consequences for the fate of animal populations: it can make the difference between survival and extinction.

Seemingly small, individual movements translate at larger scales into the spatial dynamics of entire populations. Whether animals migrate across continents, or simply shift their activity between neighboring resource patches, the combination of individual movements leads to flows that reconfigure populations. These flows ultimately dictate the species’ distribution.

“Understanding animal movement is key to understanding wildlife populations,” NMBU-researcher Pierre Dupont says.

From individual movements to population flow

In a new project, Dupont and his colleagues will attempt to understand how individual movements and their intrinsic and extrinsic determinants lead to population flows across the landscape.

“This will be done by bridging the gap between the fields of population dynamics and movement ecology,” he says.

This will be achieved with a focus on three large carnivore populations: wolves, wolverines and brown bears in Scandinavia.

Continuation of years’ work

Project PopFlow is a continuation of previous projects from NMBU’s applied quantitative ecology group.

Where previous project developed and applied statistical methods to quantify and explain the distribution of large carnivore populations, the new project aims at quantifying movements of individuals and its consequences for population dynamics.

“Where do individuals move from, where do they go, and how many, will be the main questions we will address,” Dupont comments.

“Our focus will be the repercussions of these individual movements on the overall spatio-temporal dynamics of large carnivore populations in Scandinavia.”

Examples of research questions that are to be investigated during the project include:

• How do large carnivore species disperse across Scandinavia?
• How do social dynamics influence wolf movement patterns?
• What drives the wolverine population expansion in Scandinavia?
• How do the population density and sex structure influence brown bear dispersal?
• How do large carnivores move through a human impacted landscape?
• How will alternative management strategies affect population dynamics?