LB 5-33 - Tiger movement analysis based on a time-geographic approach

Background/Question/Methods:

Tiger is a unique species in Asia. Our research target, the largest population of the Indochinese tiger (Panthera tigris corbeti) that occurs in the Western Forest Complex (WEFCOM) in Thailand, is the only potential source population for the recovery of this subspecies, thus understanding the underlying processes that drive its ecology and behavior are important for the conservation of tigers in Southeast Asia. Time geography has been widely used in wildlife home range and interaction of lower-level movement analysis, however, applying it to analyze higher-level behavior of wildlife remains limited. Therefore, we performed spatiotemporal analysis on the GPS tracking data of a mother tiger and two cubs in Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary during 2019-2020 as a case study. A time-geographic approach and sequence analysis are used to analyze tigers’ patrolling and hunting patterns. Frequencies and duration of tigers' interaction with frequently-visited places are quantified using an advanced time-geographic interaction analysis algorithm. Scent marking places along patrolling trajectories were detected using clustering of frequently-visited places (i.e., locations with high frequency and low duration) in the proximity of the home range boundary. Hunting sites are detected as clusters of frequently-visited places within the home range with high frequency and high duration.

Results/Conclusions:

The results showed that the mother tiger and her two male cubs stayed together all the time (almost overlapped home ranges) before the cubs dispersed, but after dispersal, they tended to avoid interactions. Mother tiger shifted her patrolling emphasis dramatically from the western boundary to the eastern boundary after the cubs reached one year old. After cubs reached 18 months, they dispersed toward the north sharing the same territory but walking separately, and mother tigers tended to choose southern killing sites and only interacted with cubs in northern killing sites. In the following 4 months after their first meeting after separation, they met each other about twice a month hunted and stayed together for three days every time. One of the cubs won in the competition with his brother as he stayed in the northern area and never came back, while the other shared around 1/2 territory with the mother and interacted once to five times every month with 131343 at the time lag within 3 hours. This research is an example of applying a time-geographical approach to animal movement behavior pattern analysis and provides additional information to support wildlife conservation and management.