Statistical modelling of individual animal movement: an overview of key methods and a discussion of practical challenges

التفاصيل البيبلوغرافية
العنوان: Statistical modelling of individual animal movement: an overview of key methods and a discussion of practical challenges
المؤلفون: Patterson, Toby A, Parton, Alison, Langrock, Roland, Blackwell, Paul G, Thomas, Len, King, Ruth
سنة النشر: 2016
المجموعة: Quantitative Biology
Statistics
مصطلحات موضوعية: Statistics - Applications, Quantitative Biology - Quantitative Methods
الوصف: With the influx of complex and detailed tracking data gathered from electronic tracking devices, the analysis of animal movement data has recently emerged as a cottage industry amongst biostatisticians. New approaches of ever greater complexity are continue to be added to the literature. In this paper, we review what we believe to be some of the most popular and most useful classes of statistical models used to analyze individual animal movement data. Specifically we consider discrete-time hidden Markov models, more general state-space models and diffusion processes. We argue that these models should be core components in the toolbox for quantitative researchers working on stochastic modelling of individual animal movement. The paper concludes by offering some general observations on the direction of statistical analysis of animal movement. There is a trend in movement ecology toward what are arguably overly-complex modelling approaches which are inaccessible to ecologists, unwieldy with large data sets or not based in mainstream statistical practice. Additionally, some analysis methods developed within the ecological community ignore fundamental properties of movement data, potentially leading to misleading conclusions about animal movement. Corresponding approaches, e.g. based on L\'evy walk-type models, continue to be popular despite having been largely discredited. We contend that there is a need for an appropriate balance between the extremes of either being overly complex or being overly simplistic, whereby the discipline relies on models of intermediate complexity that are usable by general ecologists, but grounded in well-developed statistical practice and efficient to fit to large data sets.
نوع الوثيقة: Working Paper
URL الوصول: http://arxiv.org/abs/1603.07511
رقم الأكسشن: edsarx.1603.07511
قاعدة البيانات: arXiv