A plain language review and guidance for modeling animal habitat-selection

This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. This is version 1 of this Preprint. You must log in to post a comment. There are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article. This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. This is version 1 of this Preprint. Add a Comment You must log in to post a comment. Comments There are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article. Animal habitat selection is the process of how individual organisms disproportionately use habitat compared to what is available to them. Understanding habitat selection is important for the study of ecology and conservation. However, learning the foundations of making inference or prediction on animal habitat selection can be quite challenging. Foremost, the literature is large and highly technical. We summarize important considerations in getting the basics right, pointing to key papers in the modern literature. We also demonstrate many of these considerations in an online vignette and associated code. We hope this work will help jumpstart student and practitioner learning about habitat selection modeling, provide guidance when reviewing analyses, and lead to rigorous ecological studies that help guide the management and conservation of animal populations. https://doi.org/10.32942/X25W85 Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences Habitat selection, logistic regression, random effect, resource selection function, statistical model, step selection function., logistic regression, random effect, resource selection function, statistical model, step selection function Published: 2025-12-19 03:25 Last Updated: 2025-12-19 03:25 CC-By Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Data and Code Availability Statement: https://github.com/bgerber123/Habitat-Selection-Guidance/ Language: English