Hi all,

Due to quarantine my uni is closed and I can't get any hands on help with analysis for a manuscript. My study is looking at dispersal distances of small mammals in two populations and how dispersal distances are affected by population density. It seems pretty straight forward except that my study sites are two different shapes and one of my co-authors thinks that I should find a way to statistically correct for this difference since my results could simply be due to animals migrating outside of the boundaries for study site B and therefore dispersal distances are shorter than what actually occurs.

Study site A: mostly square with area of 3km2, with a low population density and higher mean dispersal distance

Study site B: a long rectangle 4km by 0.5km, with a high population density and lower mean dispersal distance.

It was suggested that I build a model and let the program do random walks in and out of the study sites to mimic dispersing individuals. Then test whether the model correctly represents what is actually happening. However neither of my advisors has any experience in movement ecology. Ideally it would be nice to account for actual home ranges within the study sites since being able to see how theoretical movement would happen in a polygon (or how often individuals may move out of it) based on actual locations of home ranges would be exceedling helpful.

So my questions are

1: is this extra modeling step necessary or is it overkill?

2: what program(s) (open source please) could I use to do this?

3: how do I do this? can you provide tutorials and examples to help me figure this out, or terms to search for?

I have novice R and QGIS skills by the way. Thank you very much in advance!