Bio‐logging sensors attached to radiotelemetry receivers have great potential to transform our understanding of the ecological, physiological, and energetic constraints that shape patterns of wildlife movement under field conditions. We used video camera collars to assess microhabitat selectivity by woodland caribou Rangifer tarandus in boreal forests of Ontario, Canada. Our study areas provided a range of fine‐grain microhabitats within forest stands (>10 ha), drawn from an unlogged forest landscape and a partially commercially‐logged landscape. We classified ground‐truthed samples within each stand into their sub‐stand vegetation types at a scale of <10 m radius. We used a resource selection function to evaluate microhabitat selection by caribou, contrasting their selection of vegetation type by season, study area, calf presence, and behaviour, as identified from 17 384 videos from 19 caribou. Most caribou observations were in upland sites in all seasons and caribou showed seasonal selection among the vegetation types. Most used sites were dominated either by black spruce Picea mariana or jack pine Pinus banksiana and all other vegetation types were seldomly used. The only favoured lowland vegetation type was poor lowland (low stocking, wet deep organic soils) and wetland types selected in summer. Caribou with calves did not select vegetation types differently from females without calves, nor did they avoid other caribou. Caribou selected for vegetation types with the greatest amount of lichen and other commonly used food types. While habitat selection at landscape scales is important to avoid predation, the videos enabled an understanding of within stand selection among closely‐related forest types, indicating habitat selection occurred at a finer spatial scale for different reasons. This new knowledge is useful for identifying silvicultural practices needed to restore plant communities most strongly selected by caribou across a managed landscape, which would be expected to improve their energetic balance.
Thompson et al. (Sun,) studied this question.