Home range

In a space of action ( English Home -range ) the amount of used habitat of an animal is referred to in Zoology and in the social and behavioral geography. WH Burt described in 1943 the home range as the area that can be defined by the normal activities of an animal. Among these he counted foraging, mating and rearing of young. In contrast, temporary stays to explore the surrounding area by Burt should not include the concept of home range. The action space of an animal is often much larger than the area, so the defended against conspecifics surface.

Methodology

The size of the home range can be determined by various methods, most commonly the minimum convex polygon is given. To determine the action space animals are often provided with transmitters until a few years ago in the normal case with ground telemetry station, and the whereabouts of the animal is determined by an observer with a or in the best case by several observers by cross bearing. In recent years, more and more GPS satellite transmitters are used, which allow a continuous data acquisition without the use of field observers.