Using pseudo-absence models to test for environmental selection in marine movement ecology: the importance of sample size and selection strength

BACKGROUND: Understanding the selection of environmental conditions by animals requires knowledge of where they are, but also of where they could have been. Presence data can be accurately estimated by direct sampling, sightings, or through electronic tag deployments. However, absence data are harder to determine because absences are challenging to measure in an uncontrolled setting. To address this problem, ecologists have developed different methods for generating pseudo-absence data relying on theoretical movement models. These null models represent the movement of environmentally naive individuals, creating a set of locations that animals could have been if they were not exhibiting environmental selection. METHODS: Here, we use four different kinds of null animal movement models—Brownian motion, Lévy walks, Correlated random walks, and Joint correlated random walks to test the ability and power of each of these null movement models to serve as appropriate animal absence models. We use Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests to detect environmental selection using two data sets, one of simulated animal tracks biased towards warmer sea surface temperatures, and one of 57 observed blue shark tracks of unknown sea surface temperature selection. RESULTS: The four different types of movement models showed minimal difference in the ability to serve as appropriate null models for environmental selection studies. Selection strength and sample size were more important in detecting true environmental selection. We show that this method can suffer from high false positive rates, especially in the case where animals are not selecting for specific environments. We provide estimates of test accuracy at different sample sizes and selection strengths to avoid false positives when using this method. CONCLUSION: We show how movement models can be used to generate pseudo-absences and test for habitat selection in marine organisms. While this approach efficiently detects environmental selection in marine organisms, it cannot detect the underlying mechanisms driving this selection. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40462-022-00362-1.