Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 July 2016
A proposal is given for estimating the home range of an animal based on sequential sightings. We assume the given sightings are independent, identically distributed random vectors X1,· ··, Xn whose common distribution has compact support. If are the polar coordinates of the sightings, then is a sup-measure and corresponds to the right endpoint of the distribution . The corresponding upper semi-continuous function l(θ) is the boundary of the home range. We give a consistent estimator for the boundary l and under the assumption that the distribution of R1 given is in the domain of attraction of an extreme value distribution with bounded support, we are able to give an approximate confidence region.
This research was partially supported by the Forschungsinstitut für Mathematik, ΕTH, Zürich and by Nato Collaborative Research Grant CRG 901020. The hospitality of Professor Paul Embrechts and ETH Zürich, Cornell's School of Operations Research and Industrial Engineering and Erasmus University is gratefully acknowledged. S. Resnick was also partially supported by NSF Grant MCS 9100027 at Cornell University.