Navigating through the R packages for movement
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The advent of miniaturized biologging devices has provided ecologists with unparalleled opportunities to record animal movement across scales, and led to the collection of ever-increasing quantities of tracking data. In parallel, sophisticated tools to process, visualize and analyze tracking data have been developed in abundance. Within the R software alone, we listed 57 focused on these tasks, called here tracking packages. Here, we reviewed these tracking packages, as an introduction to this set of packages for researchers, and to provide feedback and recommendations to package developers, from a user perspective. We described each package based on a workflow centered around tracking data (i.e. (x,y,t)), broken down in three stages: pre-processing, post-processing, and analysis (data visualization, track description, path reconstruction, behavioral pattern identification, space use characterization, trajectory simulation and others). Supporting documentation is key to the accessibility of a package for users. Based on a user survey, we reviewed the quality of packages' documentation, and identified 12 packages with good or excellent documentation. Links between packages were assessed through a network graph analysis. Although a large group of packages shows some degree of connectivity (either depending on functions or suggesting the use of another tracking package), a third of tracking packages work on isolation, reflecting a fragmentation in the R Movement-Ecology programming community. Finally, we provide recommendations for users to choose packages, and for developers to maximize usefulness of their contribution and strengthen the links between the programming community.
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