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While some exceptions exist, animals generally exhibit a higher degree of mobility than plants. Animals often possess specialized structures like muscles and limbs that facilitate movement, whereas plants are rooted in place.
Dec 12, 2018 · In this paper we have stayed close to animals ‘big-like-us’ , but rich pickings are visible amidst considerations of the mobilities of more alien animals, like the vampire squid (Flusser and Bec, 2012), as well as plants (Marder, 2015) and fungal spores (Tsing, 2014).
Another key difference is their mobility; animals have the ability to move from one place to another, while plants are rooted in the ground and rely on external factors like wind or animals for pollination and seed dispersal.
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Animals living in landscapes used intensively by people travel, on average, only half to one-third as far as animals in more remote areas do — a pattern that's consistent across dozens of species worldwide. The finding, published today in Science1, has implications for important ecological processes linked to animal movement, such as seed transport and nutrient cycling. And it could spell trouble for the animals themselves as the climate changes.
More than 100 scientists around the world shared satellite-tracking data for 803 mammals from 57 species, from impala (Aepyceros melampus) to olive baboons (Papio anubis) and grizzly bears (Ursus arctos). The data charted the animals’ movements over timescales of up to ten days, and were correlated with a Human Footprint Index that measures how deeply our species has impacted a place, using metrics such as population density and the presence of roads and night-time lights.
There’s likely to be more than one explanation for the animals’ reduced mobility, says Marlee Tucker, a macro-ecologist at Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, who led the study. “Some animals might be sort of trapped, caught in fragments that are suitable for them, surrounded by a landscape that is not suitable — a road, a fence or a lot of people.” But others might be tethering themselves to attractive resources, such as edible crops or water sources intended for livestock.
Sticking close to calories
That helps to explain the behaviour of a herd of elk (Cervus elaphus) near Banff National Park in Canada tracked by ecologist Mark Hebblewhite of the University of Montana in Missoula. Many have stopped migrating between summer and winter range. “They’ve given up their old wild ways,” Hebblewhite says. The same dynamic is playing out with migrating ungulates across the western United States and Canada, Hebblewhite says. Many now spend the summer feasting on irrigated alfalfa crops in areas they once abandoned in warm months. “The point of migrating was to get access to what’s under that [sprinkler] in August” — calories.“
Reduced movement can affect ecosystems because it means that seeds and nutrients in dung might not be spread so widely, or because herbivores such as elk graze smaller areas more intensively. It can affect the animals, as well: crowding together in a small area could increase the risk of disease. “It is definitely concerning,” Tucker says.
- Emma Marris
- 2018
Oct 18, 2023 · Open Source: Yes. Summary. This study reviews a conceptual approach to understanding animals’ mobility. This field of study recognizes that movement is not just about the physical act, but also about the social and cultural meanings attached to it.
May 25, 2022 · Conceptually, movement began to draw attention in modern ecology because of its implications for reproduction, gene flow, and metapopulation dynamics; as such, studies on animal and plant dispersal constituted a large portion of the ecological literature on movement until the early 2000s [3 – 5].
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Jun 22, 2021 · Plants may not move as far or as quickly as animals, but some of their movements achieve many of the same functional ends as those of animals [1,2]. Here we focus on circumnutation, a helical movement of elongating plant organs that has been investigated for decades [ 3 ].
