Sequential decision-making in a variable environment: modeling elk movement in Yellowstone National Park as a dynamic game.

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Potapov, A. B.
  • Noonburg, E. G.
  • Newman, L. A.
  • Lewis, M. A.
  • Crabtree, R. L.

• We develop a suite of models with varying complexity to predict elk movement behavior during the winter on the Northern Range of Yellowstone National Park (YNP). The models range from a simple representation of optimal patch choice to a dynamic game, and we show how the underlying theory in each is related by the presence or absence of state- and frequency-dependence. We compare predictions from each of the models for three variables that are of basic and applied interest: elk survival, aggregation, and use of habitat outside YNP. Our results suggest that despite low overall forage depletion in the winter, frequency-dependence is crucial to the predictions for elk movement and distribution. Furthermore, frequency-dependence interacts with mass-dependence in the predicted outcome of elk decision-making. We use these results to show how models that treat single movement decisions in isolation from the seasonal sequence of decisions are insufficient to capture landscape scale behavior.

• Date created

  2007

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Foraging theory
  • Cervus elaphus
  • Yellowstone National Park
  • Game theory
  • Dynamic programming

• Type of Item

  Article (Published)

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R36H4CS27

• License

  © 2007 Elsevier. This version of this article is open access and can be downloaded and shared. The original author(s) and source must be cited.