  1. The utilisation distribution describes the relative probability of use of
a spatial unit by an animal. It is natural to think of it as the long-term
consequence of the animal's short-term movement decisions: it is the
accumulation of small displacements which, over time, gives rise to global
patterns of space use. However, most utilisation distribution models either
ignore the underlying movement, assuming the independenceof observed locations,
or are based on simplistic Brownian motion movement rules. 2. We introduce a
new continuous-time model of animal movement, based on the Langevin diffusion.
This stochastic process has an explicit stationary distribution, conceptually
analogous to the idea of the utilisation distribution, and thus provides an
intuitive framework to integrate movement and space use. We model the
stationary (utilisation) distribution with a resource selection function to
link the movement to spatial covariates, and allow inference into habitat
selection. 3. Standard approximation techniques can be used to derive the
pseudo-likelihood of the Langevin diffusion movement model, and to estimate
habitat preference and movement parameters from tracking data. We investigate
the performance of the method on simulated data, and discuss its sensitivity to
the time scale of the sampling. We present an example of its application to
tracking data of Stellar sea lions (Eumetopiasjubatus). 4. Due to its
continuous-time formulation, this method can be applied to irregular telemetry
data. It provides a rigorous framework to estimate long-term habitat selection
from correlated movement data.
