Background. Animal biotelemetry and individual-based modeling (IBM) are natural complements, but there are very few published examples where they are applied together to address fundamental or applied ecological questions. Existing studies are often found in the modeling literature and draw opportunistically on small datasets collected for purposes other than the model application. Animal biotelemetry can provide the robust measurements that capture relevant ecological patterns needed to

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... erize, calibrate, and assess hypotheses in IBMs; together they could help meet demand for predictive modeling and decision-support in the face of environmental change. Results. Using an exemplar, simple IBM that uses spatio-temporal movement patterns of 103 acoustic-tagged juvenile yearling Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) to quantitatively assess two migratory strategies smolts are hypothesized to use while migrating north through the plume of the Columbia River (United States of America), we find that animal biotelemetry can provide the robust measurements that capture relevant ecological patterns needed to parameterize, calibrate, and assess hypotheses in IBMs; together they could help meet demand for predictive modeling and decision-support in the face of environmental change.Conclusions. Animal biotelemetry and individual-based modeling are now mature fields of inquiry. Our hope is that this model description and the basic analytical techniques will effectively illustrate individual-based models for the biotelemetry community, and perhaps inspire new collaborations between biotelemetry researchers and individual-based modelers.