Anthropogenic land conversion is increasingly affecting wildlife populations. To mitigate impacts, we must understand how animals are affected by different types of human activity. Here, we examine if terrestrial mammals altered their movements around buildings in response to reduced human mobility during COVID-19 lockdowns. Using GPS data from 35 study sites across five continents and 23 different species, we tested whether animals changed their avoidance of buildings during lockdowns. Meta-analysis of population-level effects revealed that, in areas with high (but not low) human footprint, animals tended to show a significant reduction in their avoidance of buildings during lockdown. No such effect was detected during equivalent periods in years other than 2020, indicating that behavioural changes were caused by reduced human mobility, independent of infrastructure. Our findings suggest that animals living alongside humans exhibit greater plasticity when people change their behaviour, likely reflecting the combined effects of environmental filtering and habituation.

Movement ecology is a rapidly maturing discipline with direct applications to today's conservation challenges. Movement reflects how animals interact with their environments and, thus, determines how they respond to both changing conditions and possible management interventions. Surprisingly, the full potential of integrating movement ecology with conservation science to develop more effective conservation strategies has remained untapped. Here, we argue that the conceptual and practical integration of these two disciplinary perspectives can create a mutually reinforcing cycle of knowledge production and conservation action that is essential for the preservation of global biodiversity. To facilitate the realization of this vision, we provide a framework for disciplinary integration and make specific recommendations for immediate action.

Restricted space use patterns are common in mobile organisms, yet an understanding of how such patterns are developed is lacking. We conceptualize the settlement process of home range formation as the discovery of patches and subsequent decision to return to them. We then test how forage quality and landscape structure influence this process. Using 5 years of data from reintroduced bison (n = 10), we found patch discovery was influenced by landscape structure, with lower traveling costs, larger patch size, and higher patch connectivity facilitating patch discovery. Once discovered, areas of high-quality were more likely incorporated into regular space use, especially if an individual had recently visited relatively high-quality areas. Overall, landscape structure mainly influenced patch discovery, while forage quality underlined space use refinement. Our work provides a mechanistic understanding of home range development, elucidating the iterative process of settlement as a function of both landscape structure and habitat quality.