wildlifeDI

The wildilfeDI package can be downloaded (and installed) directly from CRAN! DOWNLOAD. A more up-to-date version with under development functionality can be downloaded directly from GitHub.

Also, be sure to check out the documentation and vignette files associated with the package for more detailed instructions.

The development of these tools was motivated by a one of my recent papers that looked at a new, path-based measure of dynamic interaction (Long and Nelson 2013). Following up on this research, we compared this method with a number of other currently available methods (see Long et al. 2014). The R code used to compute each of the methods is then packaged up so that other researchers can implement them in their own research. I have written a vignette as part of the package that outlines the implementation of each method, along with some of the guidelines we identif in our paper.

Available Methods

• Prox - Proximity analysis (Bertrand et al. 1996)
• Ca - Coefficient of association (Cole 1949; Bauman 1998)
• Don - Doncaster's non-parametric test (Doncaster 1990)
• Lixn, Laa, Lbb - Minta's tests for spatial and temporal interaction (Minta 1992)
• Cs - Coefficient of sociality (Kenward et al. 1993)
• HAI - Half-weight association index (Brotherton et al. 1997)
• Cr - Correlation coefficient (Shirabe 2006)
• DI - Dynamic interaction index (Long and Nelson 2013)
• IAB - Spatial-Temporal Interaction Index (Benhamou et al. 2014)

Additional Information

The wildlifeDI package has been developed for use within the statistical software R. The functions rely heavily on the data structures and methods developed in the adehabitat suite of packages which are extremely useful in the analysis of wildlife telemetry data.

For more information on the use of the adehabitat objects and methods see the documentation and vignettes provided alongside each package, and the paper by Calenge (2006).

Should you have any further questions please contact me via email: jed.long AT st-andrews.ac.uk

References

Bauman PJ. 1998. The Wind Cave National Park elk herd: home ranges, seasonal movements, and alternative control methods. MS Thesis, South Dakota State University, Brookings, USA.

Benhamou, S., Valeix, M., Chamaille-Jammes, S., Macdonald, D., Loveridge, A.J. (2014) Movement-based analysis of interactions in African lions. Animal Behaviour, 90: 171-180.

Bertrand MR, DeNicla AJ, Beissinger SR, Swihart RK. 1996. Effects of parturition on home ranges and social affiliations of female white-tailed deer. Journal of Wildlife Management 60: 899-909.

Brotherton P, Pemberton J, Komers P, Malarky G. 1997. Genetic and behavioural evidence of monogamy in a mammal, Kirk's dik-dik (Madoquakirkii). Proceedings of the Royal Society of London: Series B Biological Sciences 264: 675-681.

Calenge C. 2006. The package "adehabitat" for the R software: A tool for the analysis of space and habitat use by animals. Ecological Modelling 197: 516-519.

Cole LC. 1949. The measurement of interspecific association. Ecology 30: 411-424.

Doncaster CP. 1990. Non-parametric estimates of interactions from radio-tracking data. Journal of Theoretical Biology 143: 431-443.

Kenward RE, Marcstrom V, Karlbom M. 1993. Post-nestling behaviour in goshawks, Accipiter gentilis: II. Sex differences in sociality and nest-switching. Animal Behaviour 46: 371-378.

Long JA, Nelson TA. 2013. Measuring dynamic interaction in movement data Transactions in GIS. 17(1), 62-77.

Long, JA, Nelson, TA, Webb, SL, Gee, K (in press). A critical examination of indices of dynamic interaction for wildlife telemetry studies. Journal of Animal Ecology. DOI: 10.1111/1365-2656.12198.

Minta SC. 1992. Tests of spatial and temporal interaction amoung animals. Ecological Applications 2: 178-188.

Shirabe T. 2006. Correlation analysis of discrete motions. In GIScience 2006. LNCS, vol. 4197, Raubal M, Miller HJ, Frank AU, Goodchild MF (eds.); Springer-Verlag: Berlin; 370-382.