Animal behaviour on the move: the use of auxiliary information and semi-supervision to improve behavioural inferences from Hidden Markov Models applied to GPS tracking datasets.

ABSTRACT:

Background

State-space models, such as Hidden Markov Models (HMMs), are increasingly used to classify animal tracks into behavioural states. Typically, step length and turning angles of successive locations are used to infer where and when an animal is resting, foraging, or travelling. However, the accuracy of behavioural classifications is seldom validated, which may badly contaminate posterior analyses. In general, models appear to efficiently infer behaviour in species with discrete foraging and travelling areas, but classification is challenging for species foraging opportunistically across homogenous environments, such as tropical seas. Here, we use a subset of GPS loggers deployed simultaneously with wet-dry data from geolocators, activity measurements from accelerometers, an

SUBMITTER: Saldanha S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10367325 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature