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#AnimBehav2021 Mountain goats (Oreamnos americanus) are elusive high alpine ungulates that live in steep and mountainous environments where it is difficult to directly observe and record behaviour. 1/6 @DavidHik
We studied two separate study groups of GPS collared mountain goats using Hidden Markov models (HMMs) to identify hidden behavioural states and predict habitat use. 2/6 #AnimBehav2021
We explored how behaviour changed over time of day. We found mountain goats are most likely to forage during daylight hours, travel in the crepuscular periods and bed at night. 3/6 #AnimBehav2021
We found behaviour changed over distance from escape terrain. We found mountain goats were more likely to forage away from escape terrain, travel within and away from escape terrain and bed within escape terrain. 4/6 #AnimBehav2021
We visited field sites with behavioural states (Fig 1) to look for physical evidence of behaviours, including foraging, travelling, and bedding. We found evidence of the specific behaviour the model predicted in 64% of the cases. 5/6 #AnimBehav2021
Our results illustrate that HMMs have the power to predict why mountain goats are using areas, identify high value areas and then we can concentrate our conservation efforts in those places. 6/6 #AnimBehav2021
