The movedesignR package and Shiny application are designed to support researchers in the planning and evaluation of movement ecology studies, focusing on two key targets: estimating home range areas, and estimating movement speed and distance traveled.

Movement ecology studies frequently make use of data collected from animal tracking projects. Planning a successful animal tracking project requires careful consideration and clear objectives. It is crucial to plan ahead and understand how much data is required to accurately answer your chosen research questions, and choose the optimal tracking regime/schedule.

To assist with study design, movedesign integrates the continuous-time methods available with the ctmmR package. Animal movement is inherently autocorrelated (locations are similar as a function of space and time) and the ctmm package allows us to model these data as continuous-time stochastic processes, while dealing with other known biases (such as small sample sizes, irregular or missing data, and location error).

This app was built using the golem framework.

Installation:

To install the stable version of movedesign from CRAN:

install.packages("movedesign")

To install the most recent development version directly from GitHub:

install.packages("remotes")
remotes::install_github("ecoisilva/movedesign")

If you encounter any issues, consult the installation troubleshooting vignette for potential solutions.

Running the application:

To launch movedesign, load the library and run the following command in your R console:

library(movedesign)
movedesign::run_app()

Using the application:

Start with the guided tutorial in the 'Home' tab. For a more detailed introduction, refer to the vignettes or the manuscripts (references below).

Getting help:

If you encounter a bug, please submit an issue. For more general questions and suggestions, contact Inês Silva.

Citation:

To cite movedesign, use the following:

citation("movedesign")

Silva, I., Fleming, C. H., Noonan, M. J., Fagan, W. F., & Calabrese, J. M. (2023). movedesign: Shiny R app to evaluate sampling design for animal movement studies. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 14(9), 2216–2225. DOI: 10.1111/2041-210X.14153