Journal
METHODS IN ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION
Volume 7, Issue 11, Pages 1308-1315Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/2041-210X.12578
Keywords
behavioural state; maximum likelihood; random walk; state-switching model; telemetry data
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Due to the substantial progress in tracking technology, recent years have seen an explosion in the amount of movement data being collected. This has led to a huge demand for statistical tools that allow ecologists to draw meaningful inference from large tracking data sets. The class of hidden Markov models (HMMs) matches the intuitive understanding that animal movement is driven by underlying behavioural modes and has proven to be very useful for analysing movement data. For data that involve a regular sampling unit and negligible measurement error, these models usually are sufficiently flexible to capture the complex correlation structure found in movement data, yet are computationally inexpensive compared to alternative methods. The R package moveHMM allows ecologists to process GPS tracking data into series of step lengths and turning angles, and to fit an HMM to these data, allowing, in particular, for the incorporation of environmental covariates. The package includes assessment and visualization tools for the fitted model. We illustrate the use of moveHMM using (simulated) movement of the legendary wild haggis Haggis scoticus. Our findings illustrate the role our software, and movement modelling in general, can play in conservation and management by illuminating environmental constraints.
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