  1. Spatial memory plays a role in the way animals perceive their
environments, resulting in memory-informed movement patterns that are
observable to ecologists. Developing mathematical techniques to understand how
animals use memory in their environments allows for an increased understanding
of animal cognition. 2. Here we describe a model that accounts for the memory
of seasonal or ephemeral qualities of an animal's environment. The model
captures multiple behaviors at once by allowing for resource selection in the
present time as well as long-distance navigations to previously visited
locations within an animal's home range. 3. We performed a set of analyses on
simulated data to test our model, determining that it can provide informative
results from as little as one year of discrete-time location data. We also show
that the accuracy of model selection and parameter estimation increases with
more location data. 4. This model has potential to identify a specific
mechanism in which animals use memory to optimize their foraging, by revisiting
temporally and predictably variable resources at consistent time lags.
