BioConcepts

home rangeHeimatgebiet (ger.)

• An area which an animal or group of animals normally inhabits and travels regularly in search of food or mates (OED 2012)
  category biogeography

  1909

  home-range of each individual

  Thompson Seton, E. (1909). Life-Histories of Northern Animals, 2 vols. (London 1910): I, 26; cf. id. (1920). For a methodic study of life-histories of mammals. J. Mammal. 1, 67-69: 68.

  1909

  No wild animal roams at random. All have a certain range that they consider home. Some have two of these, one for summer, the other for winter, and these are called migratory animals

  Thompson Seton, E. (1909). Life-Histories of Northern Animals, 2 vols. (London 1910): I, 153; cf. I, 26.

  1913

  prairie deer-mouse (Peromyscus bairdii) [...] its home range is about 100 yds.

  Shelford, V.E. (1913). Animal Communities in Temperate America: 286.

  1982

  home range The area, usually around the domicile, over which an animal normally travels in search of food: home realm; cf. territory.

  Lincoln, R.J., Boxshall, G.A. & Clark, P.F. (1982). A Dictionary of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics: 115.