Mesoscale movement and recursion behaviors of Namibian black rhinos

摘要

Movement ecology holds considerable promise for understanding rhino ecology and their conservation. However, an ISI Web of Science keyword search using “movement ecology” and “rhinoceros” yields no published studies. Make the same search for elephant or whales and many published studies appear. It is interesting to contemplate why rhino are so much less studied in this regard. Foremost among the reasons is probably that elephant and whales range over great distances and migrate, thus making movement a more obvious feature of their ecology and germane to their conservation and management. Rhinos, however, are attached to comparatively small home ranges with intensively used core areas [ ]. Movement ecology studies of other large herbivores that are similarly sedentary, such as giraffe and hippopotamus, are also scant. Fitting GPS collars to rhino has also proved more difficult [ ] and controversial [ , ] than many other species, including elephants. Rhinos do not have slender necks to hold a collar between their heads and shoulders; and they treat their collars roughly, breaking them on the vegetation and rocks on which they push and rub, or reducing satellite antennae functionality through a coating of mud when wallowing. Until recently, rhino movement studies were limited to short-range horn-implant transmitters [ , ] that yielded comparatively small amounts of discontinuous movement data. These studies, however, provided movement data at both the micro (step-by-step foraging) and macro (seasonal ranging) scales, but not at the meso (daily or weekly) scale.