השוואת שיטות

	דגימת חיה מוקדית	ניתוח העדפות מיקרו-בית גידול
תחום	מדע וטרינרי	מדע וטרינרי
משפחה	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
שנת המקור	1974	1970s–1980s (formalized)
הוגה השיטה	Jeanne Altmann	Multiple contributors (Morris, Manly, Johnson, and others)
סוג	Behavioral Sampling Protocol	Quantitative observational method
מקור מכונן	Altmann, J. (1974). Observational study of behavior: sampling methods. Behaviour, 49(3-4), 227-267.	Morris, D. W. (1987). Ecological scale and habitat use. Ecology, 68(2), 362–369.
כינויים	FAS, focal sampling, behavior recording	habitat selection analysis, microhabitat use analysis, fine-scale habitat preference study, microhabitat utilization assessment
קשורות	3	1
תקציר	Focal Animal Sampling (FAS) is a systematic observational method in which an observer focuses on one individual animal at a time, recording its behavior continuously or at regular intervals for a fixed period. Introduced by Jeanne Altmann in 1974, FAS provides detailed, quantitative ethograms of individual behavior, making it essential for studying animal behavioral ecology, welfare, and responses to environmental changes.	Microhabitat Preference Analysis is a quantitative ecological method used to determine which fine-scale environmental features — such as vegetation structure, substrate type, temperature, or cover — animals actively select beyond what is randomly available to them. Widely applied in veterinary science, wildlife biology, and ethology, it compares the characteristics of locations an animal uses against those of randomly sampled available locations to infer habitat preference, avoidance, or random use.