Advances in technology, particularly miniaturization of electronic components, have allowed wildlife biologists to remotely monitor free- ranging animals while they pursue their normal movements and activities. Transmitters, each with a unique identifying frequency, are attached to the animals, and signals from these transmitters are received by the biologists to track the animals. Such use of radio-tracking equipment to obtain biological information about animals is known as radio tracking. The design of radio-tracking studies and the analysis of data collected from such studies is the subject of this book. We have organized the material in this text into a logical sequence of chapters, with each chapter introducing and discussing a specific telemetry topic or analytical problem. The first three chapters deal with designing radio-tracking studies and the mechanics of data collection, and we recommend that all readers, regardless of their research interests and experience, review these chapters. Chapters 4 and 5 discuss the topics of estimating an animal's position and triangulation and will be of interest to anyone concerned with spatial data. In Chapter 6 we discuss a number of topics dealing with animal movements, such as graphic presentation, migration, dispersal, fidelity, and animal association, which have received little attention with respect to the development of analytical tools. Chapters 7 through 10 are each devoted to discussing a particular analytical problem which has a relatively large body of literature associated with it, such as home range estimation, habitat utilization, and estimating survival rates and population size. In the final chapter (11) we identify topics we feel would be fruitful areas for future research and discuss the need for a portable, comprehensive software package for the analysis of radio-tracking data.
