Determining the optimal revisit time for primate spatial data collection
Date
2014
Authors
Dostie, Marcus Jack
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Dept. of Geography
Abstract
A major limiting factor in the study of animal movement is the ability to collect affordable high resolution spatial data. Tracking data often requires interpolation; this research will focus on determining the amount of estimation error that can be expected at different sampling frequencies. This will allow researchers to find a sampling frequency which best captures an animal’s movement, while also allowing for the application of margins of error to previously collected data.
High resolution tracking data for individual adult vervet monkeys and chacma baboons from two sites in South Africa was used for this analysis. Their paths were resampled at increasing intervals from one minute up to sixty minutes. The increased temporal simplification of animal tracks caused by growing revisit times was anticipated to cause multiple changes to the overall path geometry which allowed for the quantification of the resulting changes in the resampled paths.
Description
Keywords
animal tracking , chacma baboons , high resolution spatial data , South Africa , vervet monkeys