Single Species Activity

The activity pattern for a given species is the distribution of its activity throughout the daily 24 hour cycle.

Single Species Activity patterns are estimated using the function fitact in the R package activity (Rowcliffe, 2021). The 95% confidence intervals are built by bootstrapping (sampling 100 times from the fitted probability density distribution). The times of day of the independent events can be transformed using average anchoring (Vazquez, 2019)  by toggling the Sun time option (additional details below).

Wildlife Insights displays two Single Species Activity graphs: a line graph and a radial plot. Learn more about each visualization below.

Interpreting the Single Species Activity Line graph

• The total number of observations for the selected species is shown in the top left hand corner.
• The x axis represents time within the 24 hour cycle.
• The y axis represents the frequency of activity.
• The dark green line represents the estimated mean activity.
• The light green shaded area represents the area between the upper 95% confidence limit and lower 95% confidence limit.
• The vertical black lines above the x axis represents an observed independent animal event.

Interpreting the Single Species Activity Radial plot

A radial plot shows the relative frequency in species activity for each time period.

• Each green bar within the radial plot represents activity within a given hour. For example, the bar to the right of the ‘24’ line represents hours 0-1 in a day (i.e., 24:00 - 01:00).
• The length of the bar is determined by using the y value of the first record within the time period considered. Hover over a bar to view the y value, or relative frequency, for that time period.

Use the filters available above the graph or plot to modify your analysis. Select the species you want to analyze by clicking on the Species filter. You can also modify the independence interval, which is the time used to separate images into discrete animal events. Select from a choice of 1, 2, 30, or 60 minutes. Other filters available include a Subproject filter and filters for Time (Months and Years).

By default the graph is displayed using clock time (0 - 24 hours). You can view the graph or plot by solar time by toggling the Sun time option. This option applies a correction to the time of each detection event, based on the average sunrise and sunset times over the period of sampling. This correction controls for the changing sunrise and sunset times in different locations. As such, there is no fixed sunrise or sunset times, but those values depend on the period (and latitude of the locations) considered.The details of this method, called double-anchoring, are specified in Vazquez, 2019.

2 Species Activity Overlap

Two Species Activity Overlap displays the temporal overlap between pairs of species, for example, predator and prey species. Overlaps are estimated using the function overlapEst in the R package overlap (Ridout and Linkie, 2009).

Interpreting the Overlap graph

• The total number of observations for each selected species is shown in the top left hand corner. The first selected species is displayed first, and is associated with the dark green line in the graph. The second selected species is displayed second, and is associated with the grey line in the graph.
• The coefficients of overlap are presented below the total observations and describe the degree of similarity between two activity patterns. The values reported represent three different estimators of overlaps. The coefficient of overlap ranges between 0 and 1, where a Δ value approaching 0 represents two species that have low activity overlap. Details on these estimators are available in Ridout and Linkie, 2009.
  • It is recommended to refer to Δ4 when the number of observations for each of the two species (or set of observations) is higher than 50, and to Δ1 in all the other cases.
  • Δ5 is never recommended and is reported only for completeness.
• The x axis represents time within the 24 hour cycle.
• The y axis represents the frequency of activity.
• The dark green line represents the activity of the first species selected.
• The grey line represents the activity of the second species selected.
• The light green shaded area represents the overlap in activity between the two selected species.

Use the filters available above the graph or plot to modify your analysis. Select the two species you want to analyze by clicking on one of the Species filters. You can also modify the independence interval, which is the time used to separate images into discrete animal events. Select from a choice of 1, 2, 30, or 60 minutes. Other filters available include a Subproject filter and filters for Time (Months and Years).

Community Detection Rates

The Community Detection Rate graph displays detection rates for all species in your filter selection. Detection Rates are estimated by pooling data across space (i.e. all deployments locations) and time (i.e. all months in the date range selected). For each species, the monthly number of independent events at each active deployment are weighted by the number of active trap-days at that deployment in a specific month using a generalized linear Poisson model. The model includes the data collected at all deployments and months over the date range selected. The overall expected number of detection events (over 100 trap-days) are then predicted based on this model for a defined date range.

The species names are displayed on the Y-axis and the detection rates on the X-axis. The mean is displayed by a green dot and the 95% confidence interval estimates displayed by a vertical line are the expected number of independent events per 100 trap-days. Hover over the green dot to view the mean and confidence intervals for the species.

On the top right of the graph you can adjust the Independence Interval and the Subprojects you wish to include in your analysis.

You can download the data underlying this graph and a copy of the graph by clicking the download button at the top right of the graph. Select the output you’d like to download:

• Graph Dataset (CSV): This includes a csv with data to reproduce the graph. The data returned will reflect the subset of data defined by the filters selected in Wildlife Insights.
• Graph Image (PNG): This includes a copy of the graph as displayed in Wildlife Insights at the time the download is requested.