Reproducible home ranges (rhr): A new, user‐friendly R package for analyses of wildlife telemetry data

Abstract

ABSTRACTAnalyzing wildlife tracking data frequently involves the estimation of home ranges. However, home range studies frequently lack important analytical steps, or only insufficiently report results. This makes it difficult for other researchers to evaluate, compare, and reproduce results from published home‐range studies. To facilitate more thorough home‐range analyses and reporting of analytical details, we developed a package for the statistical software package R that offers a user‐friendly platform for comprehensive home‐range analyses. Importantly, the package automatically generates a summary report that contains all analytical parameters used during analyses, and lists the main findings. To improve usability of the package, we also provide a graphical user interface that can be called from R without any programming skills. We currently implemented the calculation of site fidelity, time to statistical independence, minimum convex polygon, kernel density estimation, Brownian Bridge Movement Model, Jennrich–Turner Ellipses, local convex hull, estimation of home range asymptote, and area‐independent core‐area estimation. © 2015 The Wildlife Society.