Home range

Data for mapping a home range used to be gathered by careful observation, but in more recent years, the animal is fitted with a transmission collar or similar GPS device.

More recently, nonparametric methods such as the Burgman and Fox's alpha-hull and Getz and Wilmers local convex hull have been used.

The concept of the home range can be traced back to a publication in 1943 by W. H. Burt, who constructed maps delineating the spatial extent or outside boundary of an animal's movement during the course of its everyday activities.

This approach is referred to as the minimum convex polygon (MCP) method which is still widely employed,[4][5][6][7] but has many drawbacks including often overestimating the size of home ranges.

[21][22][23][24] In the appendix of a 2017 JMIR article, the home ranges for over 150 different bird species in Manitoba are reported.