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Abstract

Animal movement acts at multiple scales: it can shape the destiny of
individuals and populations, govern community and ecosystem structure,
and influence evolutionary processes and patterns of biodiversity. Recent
technological advances, such as the revolutionary developments in tracking
technology and remote sensing, provide fresh insights and the possibility to
collect detailed data on where and how animals travel through space, how
they react to and/or interact with their environment and conspecifics as
well as their predators and prey. Scientists from various disciplines ranging
from physics to psychology develop and apply ever improving analytical
techniques to observe, assess and archive animal movement across scales.
As in any other field, standardising data collection is a key prerequisite in
order to combine and extend dataset collections, many of which may further
be utilized by behavioural ecologists to answer questions on the function and
significance of animal movements. Large-scale manipulative experimental
approaches have also shed new light on old questions in animal movement,
and opened new and previously inaccessible perspectives to study animal
movement in the context of behavioural ecology. Animal movements are
intrinsic to all behavioural processes, and analysis of movement phenomena
within the framework of behavioural ecology has provided rich insights into
the mechanisms and functions of animal behavior for some decades. We
convened an international symposium to reflect on the behavioural ecology
of animal movement, asking how these two related disciplines can produce
new insights and synergies. Our symposium provided a platform that brought
together a diverse range of researchers working on animal movement
on different taxa and a range of spatial scales to discuss how behavioural
ecology can integrate with the nascent discipline of movement ecology. In
this short paper we summarise the key points from this meeting, and call for
a renewed focus on the behavioural processes involved in the movements of
animals.