An emerging movement ecology paradigm

1st 2 paragraphs: Movement of individual organisms, one of the most fundamental features of life on Earth, is a crucial component of almost any ecological and evolutionary process, including major problems associated with habitat fragmentation, climate change, biological invasions, and the spread of pests and diseases. The rich variety of movement modes seen among microorganisms, plants, and animals has fascinated mankind since time immemorial. The prophet Jeremiah (7th century B.C.),for instance, described the temporal consistency in migratory patterns of birds, and Aristotle (4th centur y B.C.) searched for common features unifying animal movements (see ref. 1). Modern movement research, however, is characterized by a broad range of specialized scientific approaches, each developed to explore a different type of movement carried out by a specific group of organisms (2). Beyond this separation across movement types and taxonomic (or functional) groups, movement research divides into four different ‘‘paradigms,’’ the random, biomechanical, cognitive, and optimality approaches (1), which are loosely linked to each other. Although movement research is extensive and is growing rapidly (2),