European Journal of Wildlife Research DOI: 10.1007/s10344-010-0462-1
Scale-dependent Selection Of Greenness By African Elephants In The Kruger-private Reserve Transboundary Region, South Africa. (2010)
Foraging behaviour and habitat selection occur as hierarchical processes. Understanding the factors that govern foraging and habitat selection thus requires investigation of those processes over the scales at which they occur.
Journal
European Journal of Wildlife Research
Author(s)
Marshal, J.P., Azhar Rajah, A., Parrini, F., Henley, M., Henley, S.R., Erasmus, B.F.N.
Summary
Foraging behaviour and habitat selection occur as hierarchical processes. Understanding the factors that govern foraging and habitat selection thus requires investigation of those processes over the scales at which they occur. We investigated patterns of habitat use by African elephants (Loxodonta africana) in relation to vegetation greenness to investigate the scale at which that landscape attribute was most closely related to distribution of elephant locations. We analysed Global Positioning System radio-collar locations for 15 individuals, using the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index as a representation of vegetation greenness in a Geographic Information Systems framework. We compared the importance of vegetation greenness at three spatial scales: the total home range, the seasonal home range and the 16-day home range.