LAUSR

Distance traveled and home range size describe how animals move in space. The seasonal variations of these parameters are important to comprehensively understand animal ecology and its connection with the reproductive behaviour and the energy costs. Researchers usually estimate the distance traveled as the sum of the straight-line displacements between sampled positions, but this approach is sensitive to the sampling frequency and does not account for the tortuosity of the animal’s movements. By means of the continuous-time movement modelling which takes into account autocorrelation and tortuosity of movement data, we estimated the distance traveled and monthly home range size of 28 wild boar Sus scrofa and modelled their inter-sexual seasonal variability. Males traveled longer distances and used larger home ranges than females, particularly during the rut in autumn-winter, consistently with the different biological cycles of males and females. Males enlarged their home rages during the rut but traveled constant average distances along the year, whereas females traveled shorter distances in correspondence with the peak of food resources and birth periods but exhibited constant home range size across seasons. The differences between the seasonal variation patterns of distance traveled and home range size, observed in both sexes, revealed the complex relationship between these two aspects of spatial behaviour and the great opportunity of including both distance traveled and home range size in behavioural ecology investigations. We provided a detailed analysis of wild boar spatial behaviour and its relationships with the reproductive cycles of males and females, promoting a deeper comprehension of their behavioural ecology.