Statistical analysis of Asiatic cheetah movement and its spatio-temporal drivers

Faridedin Cheraghi; Mahmoud Reza Delavar; Farshad Amiraslani; Seyed Kazem Alavipanah; Eliezer Gurarie; William F. Fagan

doi:10.1016/j.jaridenv.2017.12.003

Statistical analysis of Asiatic cheetah movement and its spatio-temporal drivers

Faridedin Cheraghi, Mahmoud Reza Delavar, Farshad Amiraslani, Seyed Kazem Alavipanah, Eliezer Gurarie, William F. Fagan

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

6 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

We analyzed the movement behavior of a male Asiatic cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus venaticus), a critically endangered species, to understand its habitat preferences and relationship to its ambient environment. Using a hidden Markov chain approach, we identified distinct behavioral phases within the cheetah's movement track. We explored the conditions under which the cheetah switched between these behavioral phases. We computed summary statistics of the displacement and duration for the portion of time that the animal had constant behavior and found a linear pattern between its displacement and duration per behavioral phases. We then employed resource-selection and step-selection approaches to understand the cheetah's habitat preferences in general. The cheetah preferred intermediate elevations, low to intermediate slopes, intermediate distances from villages and shorter distances to the water resources. The cheetah moved over a range of 1137 km², mainly staying in the more montane northern part of the range. With further validation, the environmental variables and their relationship with the cheetah's behavior could be employed to aid in the conservation of this rare cat.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	141-145
Number of pages	5
Journal	Journal of Arid Environments
Volume	151
Early online date	16 Dec 2017
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaridenv.2017.12.003
Publication status	Published (in print/issue) - 1 Apr 2018

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We thank the Department of Environment of the Islamic Republic of Iran (DoE) , the Global Environment Facilities (GEF) and the United Nations Development Pro-gramme (UNDP) for developing and supporting the project ”Conservation of the Asiatic Cheetah, its natural habitat, and associated biota in the Islamic Republic of Iran” (CACP). CACP, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Panthera col-lected the cheetah and leopard telemetry data used in the present study and kindly allowed its use here. CACP , WCS and Panthera provided all funding and technical expertise for the collection of these data. We thank Houman Jowkar and Javad Najafi from CACP, for their cooperation and insightful comments on the Asiatic cheetah ecology. FC was funded by Iranian Ministry of Science, Research and Technology . EG and WF were supported by NSF grant, ABI 1458748 .

Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Elsevier Ltd

Copyright:
Copyright 2018 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

Keywords

Asiatic cheetah
Computational movement analysis
Geographical information system (GIS)
Habitat selection
Hidden Markov model
Remote sensing
Spatial ecology
State-space model

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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10.1016/j.jaridenv.2017.12.003

Cite this

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abstract = "We analyzed the movement behavior of a male Asiatic cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus venaticus), a critically endangered species, to understand its habitat preferences and relationship to its ambient environment. Using a hidden Markov chain approach, we identified distinct behavioral phases within the cheetah's movement track. We explored the conditions under which the cheetah switched between these behavioral phases. We computed summary statistics of the displacement and duration for the portion of time that the animal had constant behavior and found a linear pattern between its displacement and duration per behavioral phases. We then employed resource-selection and step-selection approaches to understand the cheetah's habitat preferences in general. The cheetah preferred intermediate elevations, low to intermediate slopes, intermediate distances from villages and shorter distances to the water resources. The cheetah moved over a range of 1137 km2, mainly staying in the more montane northern part of the range. With further validation, the environmental variables and their relationship with the cheetah's behavior could be employed to aid in the conservation of this rare cat.",

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author = "Faridedin Cheraghi and Delavar, {Mahmoud Reza} and Farshad Amiraslani and Alavipanah, {Seyed Kazem} and Eliezer Gurarie and Fagan, {William F.}",

note = "Funding Information: We thank the Department of Environment of the Islamic Republic of Iran (DoE) , the Global Environment Facilities (GEF) and the United Nations Development Pro-gramme (UNDP) for developing and supporting the project ”Conservation of the Asiatic Cheetah, its natural habitat, and associated biota in the Islamic Republic of Iran” (CACP). CACP, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Panthera col-lected the cheetah and leopard telemetry data used in the present study and kindly allowed its use here. CACP , WCS and Panthera provided all funding and technical expertise for the collection of these data. We thank Houman Jowkar and Javad Najafi from CACP, for their cooperation and insightful comments on the Asiatic cheetah ecology. FC was funded by Iranian Ministry of Science, Research and Technology . EG and WF were supported by NSF grant, ABI 1458748 . Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2017 Elsevier Ltd Copyright: Copyright 2018 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.",

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AU - Gurarie, Eliezer

AU - Fagan, William F.

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N2 - We analyzed the movement behavior of a male Asiatic cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus venaticus), a critically endangered species, to understand its habitat preferences and relationship to its ambient environment. Using a hidden Markov chain approach, we identified distinct behavioral phases within the cheetah's movement track. We explored the conditions under which the cheetah switched between these behavioral phases. We computed summary statistics of the displacement and duration for the portion of time that the animal had constant behavior and found a linear pattern between its displacement and duration per behavioral phases. We then employed resource-selection and step-selection approaches to understand the cheetah's habitat preferences in general. The cheetah preferred intermediate elevations, low to intermediate slopes, intermediate distances from villages and shorter distances to the water resources. The cheetah moved over a range of 1137 km2, mainly staying in the more montane northern part of the range. With further validation, the environmental variables and their relationship with the cheetah's behavior could be employed to aid in the conservation of this rare cat.

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KW - Habitat selection

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JO - Journal of Arid Environments

JF - Journal of Arid Environments

ER -

Statistical analysis of Asiatic cheetah movement and its spatio-temporal drivers

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

UN SDGs

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