Spatial Movement Patterns and Local Co-Occurrence of Nutria Individuals in Association with Habitats Using Geo-Self-Organizing Map (Geo-SOM)

Nutrias (Myocastor coypus) were imported to South Korea for farming in 1985; individuals escaped captivity and established wild populations in natural ecosystems in the late 1990s. Numerous studies have focused on their monitoring and management; however, information on the continuous movement of in...

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Published inBiology (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 10; no. 7; p. 598
Main Authors Lee, Do-Hun, Jung, Nam, Jang, Yong-Hyeok, Lee, KyoungEun, Lim, Joobaek, Jang, Gab-Sue, Lee, Jae Woo, Chon, Tae-Soo
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 28.06.2021
MDPI
Subjects
Animals
Biodiversity
Captivity
Climate change
Dispersal
Environmental factors
Grasslands
Habitats
Machine learning
Males
movement behavior
Myocastor coypus
Nearest-neighbor
nearest-neighbor distance
Population
Population dynamics
Receivers & amplifiers
Sex
Sexes
sexual difference
small mammal
Telemetry
Vegetation
Wetlands
United States > US
South Korea
Korean Peninsula
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Summary:Nutrias (Myocastor coypus) were imported to South Korea for farming in 1985; individuals escaped captivity and established wild populations in natural ecosystems in the late 1990s. Numerous studies have focused on their monitoring and management; however, information on the continuous movement of individuals is not available. In this study, telemetry data from field conditions were used to identify the nearest-neighbor distances of individuals in association with environmental factors, including plant type, land cover, and biological parameters. The minimum nearest-neighbor distances for the different sexes were, overall, according to the minimum distances for the same sex. Local co-occurrences of individuals, either of the same or different sex, were seasonal. Tall grasslands, followed by herbaceous vegetation, were associated with the co-occurrence of different sexes. Conversely, floating-leaved hydrophytes, followed by xeric herbaceous vegetation, were correlated with the co-occurrence of the same sex. Local female–male co-occurrences were negatively associated with male–male co-occurrences but not with female–female co-occurrences, suggesting male dominance in group formations. Movement and co-occurrence information extracted using Geo-self-organizing maps furthers our understanding of population dispersal and helps formulate management strategies for nutria populations.
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These authors contributed equally to this work.
ISSN:2079-7737
2079-7737
DOI:10.3390/biology10070598