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Advances in the aquatic sciences
RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)

PIT POP! Bursting the bubble on home-range bias with fine-scale PIT telemetry

Hugh Allan https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0251-7332 A * , Richard P. Duncan https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1175-1152 A , Peter Unmack A , Duanne White A and Mark Lintermans A
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A Centre for Applied Water Science, Institute for Applied Ecology, University of Canberra, 11 Kirinari Street, Bruce, ACT 2617, Australia.

* Correspondence to: hugh.allan@canberra.edu.au

Handling Editor: Gerry Closs

Marine and Freshwater Research 73(11) 1297-1309 https://doi.org/10.1071/MF22021
Submitted: 28 January 2022  Accepted: 28 June 2022   Published: 26 July 2022

© 2022 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)

Abstract

Context: Improved tracking technologies increase understanding of fish movement, but care is required when comparing studies of different design.

Aims: We used an approach that allowed fine-scale tracking to compare results from individual-tracking designs to simulated batch-marking designs.

Methods: Adult Galaxias tantangara (a small freshwater fish) individuals were tagged with 9-mm PIT tags in a small headwater stream and tracked with an accuracy of 1 lineal metre. To evaluate differences between common study designs, data were re-analysed to simulate both batch-marking section size and tracking resolution between 1 and 250 m.

Key results: Home-range estimates decreased with a smaller section size and tracking resolution. Batch-marking simulations differed in 99% of cases, whereas individual tracking simulations differed in only 17% of comparisons. Comparisons between different methods were rarely statistically equivalent, being so only when section size or resolution was less than 4 m.

Implications: Importantly, batch-marking studies are often likely to overestimate home-range size, and results from different studies may be comparable only when resolution is very fine or identical, even if the same method was used.

Keywords: batch marking, conservation, freshwater, home range, movement, passive integrated transponder, spatial ecology, threatened species.


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