Time intervals for estimating pronghorn and coyote home ranges and daily movements

The authors compared estimates of home range and daily movement for radio-tagged pronghorns (Antilocapra americana) and coyotes (Canis latrans) based on subsamples of data collected at short time intervals during nonconsecutive 24-hour sampling sessions. Home-range size, calculated by either the minimum area method or the linked-cell grid method, and daily distance traveled were underestimated when sampling intervals were based on statistically independent data. Autocorrelated data provided a better estimate of true home-range sizes than independent data for all sampling intervals. Estimates of daily movement based on sampling intervals > 4 hours for pronghorns and >3 hours for coyotes were not correlated with the actual distance traveled. These relationships suggest that restricting sampling effort to statistically independent time intervals sacrifices biologically significant information.

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