Combined effects of landscape fragmentation and sampling frequency of movement data on the assessment of landscape connectivity

Background - Network theory is largely applied in real-world systems to assess landscape connectivity using empirical or theoretical networks. Empirical networks are usually built from discontinuous individual movement trajectories without knowing the effect of relocation frequency on the assessment of landscape connectivity while theoretical networks generally rely on simple movement rules. We investigated the combined effects of relocation sampling frequency and landscape fragmentation on the assessment of landscape connectivity using simulated trajectories and empirical high-resolution (1 Hz) trajectories of Alpine ibex ( Capra ibex ). We also quantified the capacity of commonly used theoretical networks to accurately predict landcape connectivity from multiple movement processes. Methods – We simulated forager trajectories from continuous correlated biased random walks in simulated landscapes with three levels of landscape fragmentation. High-resolution ibex trajectories were reconstructed using GPS-enabled multi-sensor biologging data and the dead-reckoning technique. For both simulated and empirical trajectories, we generated spatial networks from regularly resampled trajectories and assessed changes in their topology and information loss depending on the resampling frequency and landscape fragmentation. We finally built commonly used theoretical networks in the same landscapes and compared their predictions to actual connectivity. Results - We demonstrated that an accurate assessment of landscape connectivity can be severely hampered (e.g., up to 66% of undetected visited patches and 29% of spurious links) when the relocation frequency is too coarse compared to the temporal dynamics of animal movement. However, the level of landscape fragmentation and underlying movement processes can both mitigate the effect of relocation sampling frequency. We also showed that network topologies emerging from different movement behaviours and a wide range of landscape fragmentation were complex, and that commonly used theoretical networks accurately predicted only 30–50% of landscape connectivity in such environments. Conclusions - Very high-resolution trajectories were generally necessary to accurately identify complex network topologies and avoid the generation of spurious information on landscape connectivity. New technologies providing such high-resolution datasets over long period should thus grow in the movement ecology sphere. In addition, commonly used theoretical models should be applied with caution to the study of landscape connectivity in real-world systems as they did not perform well as predictive tools.