Animal movement

Throughout history people have wanted to understand how animals move. In the Stone Age this was essential for hunting, whereas today knowing movement patterns allows us to predict pest outbreaks, conserve rare animals and much more.  

The development of video, radio and GPS technology has made it possible to obtain large amount of information about animal movement which then requires development of new methods for the statistical analysis and interpretation of this data.

The group focuses on video-recording and statistical analysis of insect movement. Information obtained about aphid movement is used to model aphid population dynamics.

Video recording

To understand animal movement patterns it is important to record and analyse paths of:

• large number of animals
• at relatively small time intervals.   

Using free GMimPro software available from www.nimr.mrc.ac.uk/gmimpro hundreds of individuals can be tracked simultaneously.

Path analysis

When analysing paths we are interested in:

• Why animals start and stop moving?
• What is the best model to describe their movement pattern?
• Are there individual variations in movement pattern?
• Are there variations in time – e.g. do animals switch between different modes of movement?
• Which external factors affect movement patterns?     

For further information go to Dr. Alla Mashanova's research profile.