Movement ecology perspectives on Global Change: insights from studies at a species’ distribution range scale

Recent technological advancements are yielding unprecedentedly large and detailed datasets on wildlife distribution and space use. Remote sensing from satellites and aircraft provide high coverage maps of environmental and abiotic parameters, at ever-increasing resolutions. In parallel, evidence of human-induced climate change impacts on wildlife is becoming increasingly apparent. Animals show proximate responses to changes in seasonality, habitat loss and variations in the community structure through movement and use of space. Emergence of movement behaviour can be scaled up from individual space use tactics (i.e. home range, dispersal), to interactions between individuals, to demography of populations and meta-populations, to ultimately determine the species distribution range and community structure. Some study cases from a shared, multi-population dataset at the species’ distribution range scale (EURODEER, www.eurodeer.org) are presented to show how human-induced landuse and climate change may heavily affect the processes of animal space use, demography and distribution, and offer examples of how this may feedback on ecosystem stability