Analyzing Habitat Selection in Animals Without Well-Defined Home Ranges

S. M. Arthur and colleagues presented a statistical framework that allows habitat availability to change for each observation of an animal, thus making habitat-use analysis possible when the habitat changes or it is difficult to determine a home range for each individual. I here modify their method by letting habitat availability vary on a continuous scale, rather than defining the area within a circle as equally available. The modified method also makes it possible to deal with continuously varying time intervals between observations and the influence of environmental variables (e.g., temperature, time of day) on movement activity. As an example, I use this method to analyze habitat selection of a bush-cricket (the wart-biter, Decticus verrucivorus).