Meeting Abstract
Integrative theory of animal movement comprises analyses of a complex of constraints and opportunities integrated by the animal that cause the spatiotemporal patterns of the animal across mesohabitat and microhabitat scales. For a desert lizard, the dynamics of its home range use are presumed to depend on interactions of 1) extrinsic factors such as habitat structure, thermal variation, and distribution of prey, predators and potential mates interacting with 2) intrinsic impetuses such as physical discomfort, hunger, fear, and procreation, and 3) intrinsic biomechanical and cognitive constraints. We used radio-tracking and powder-tracking to discern the movements within and among daily activity periods in adults of the Desert Horned Lizard, Phrynosoma platyrhinos over several years in early summers in the Alvord Basin, at the northern extreme of the Great Basin desert scrub. We examined the adult lizards’ use patterns of its home range, mesohabitats and microhabitats with respect to various correlates such as thermal environment, plant cover, visual field, ant colonies, and microhabitat use by predators, and distribution of conspecifics. Confidently interpreting the primary causes of home range and habitat use by an ectothermic terrestrial vertebrate even in the simplicity of desert scrub is a formidable challenge.
