Conclusion
Beyond the specific accuracy measurements that are presented in this
research, two important general patterns were found that have ecological
implications for using current home range methods to analyze animal
habitat and resource choices. First, perforated GPS-point patterns are
often inaccurate when estimating home ranges, regardless of estimation
method. This finding is ecologically important as many species live in
areas where home ranges are perforated due to natural causes like
topography or water bodies, or from human induced disturbances that
cause habitat fragmentation. Second, locational accuracy was
inconsistent for most methods. Though BRB was the most accurate and
precise for the majority of tests (Table 1), it still produces
relatively high EMD values for perforated patterns and had a fairly
large variance for the majority of GPS-point patterns. PPA consistently
maintained the highest location accuracy with the smallest variance.
While BRB was generally the most accurate method, different home range
estimators may still be more appropriate for different questions (Table
1). For example, a researcher interested in avian home ranges, should
consider using a combination of BRB, PPA, and T-LoCoH. In fact, since
all the estimators have a large amount of uncertainty in their
estimation, it is recommended that researchers or wildlife managers
never rely exclusively on one home range estimator.