Movement patterns of large herbivore neonates remain poorly understood despite the potential of movement to inform a range of topics including predator-prey interactions and susceptibility to mortality. Neonate antipredator strategies are often characterized by minimized movements after birth followed by gradual increases in activity. Larger home ranges and greater activity levels may alter survival by modifying individual energy expenditure and detection by predators. However, traditional very high frequency (VHF) radio-telemetry methods of monitoring large herbivore neonate space use and activity often collect insufficient numbers of locations needed to estimate a home range for neonates ≤ 4 weeks of age, resulting in an incomplete characterization of neonate space use. Radiocollars that use the global positioning system (GPS) obtain more locations and reduce position error but size and weight restrictions render current GPS units unavailable to study movements of neonates of even large herbivores. We modified commercially available GPS units designed to track domestic house cats (Felis catus) and constructed home ranges for white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) neonates at 1- and 4- weeks of age.
Results/Conclusions
Fawn space use increased rapidly with age during a time when traditional estimators of space use cannot collect enough data. Fawn home range size increased with age where 1-week home ranges averaged 4.86 ha and 4-week home ranges averaged 18.98 ha. As movement and space use vary with age current models that use a single home range size regardless of neonate age may inaccurately portray how habitat features influence survival of large herbivore neonates. Accurate movement models can also inform our understanding of how community structure and predators influence when neonates begin to trade-off between antipredator strategies that are characterized by low-energy movement patterns to strategies that are characterized by increased activity and active evasive movements. Neonatal survival partially determines population growth and movement influences an individual’s exposure to various mortality sources, thus our results have implications for large herbivore conservation and management.