2024/05/01 by Odd T. Jacobson, Brendan J. Barrett, Susan Perry +3 · 1 voice
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Engineering · Environmental Science · Psychology · #Animal Behavior and Reproduction #Cartography #Climate change #Computer science #Data science #Database #Ecology #Engineering #Environmental resource management #Environmental science #Field (mathematics) #Geography #Physical geography #Primate Behavior and Ecology #Range (aeronautics) #Wildlife Ecology and Conservation #Workflow
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/ele.14443
openalex publication_date 2024/05/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
Recent proliferation of GPS technology has transformed animal movement research. Yet, time-series data from this recent technology rarely span beyond a decade, constraining longitudinal research. Long-term field sites hold valuable historic animal location records, including hand-drawn maps and semantic descriptions. Here, we introduce a generalised workflow for converting such records into reliable location data to estimate home ranges, using 30 years of sleep-site data from 11 white-faced capuchin (Cebus imitator) groups in Costa Rica. Our findings illustrate that historic sleep locations can reliably recover home range size and geometry. We showcase the opportunity our approach presents to resolve open questions that can only be addressed with very long-term data, examining how home ranges are affected by climate cycles and demographic change. We urge researchers to translate historical records into usable movement data before this knowledge is lost; it is essential to understanding how animals are responding to our changing world.