Coyote Inventory - Activities Analysis and Visualizing Results - Analysis Scripts for Cape Hatteras and Cape Lookout National Seashores and Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge
Sossover D. 2025. Coyote Inventory - Activities Analysis and Visualizing Results - Analysis Scripts for Cape Hatteras and Cape Lookout National Seashores and Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge. National Park Service
Accelerometer-derived activity (VeDBA) data and visualizations for all collared individuals; includes raw sensor files, the combined VeDBA output, and the R visualization script. Five individual coyotes were GPS collared which contained accelerometers on board that recorded tri-axial accelerometer bursts at 20 Hz. Vectorial Dynamic Body Acceleration (VeDBA) was calculated for each 3.4-second burst (68 samples per burst) as the mean Euclidean magnitude of dynamic acceleration across all three axes, where dynamic acceleration is the per-sample deviation from the burst-mean static acceleration. Individual sensor files were processed through a common R pipeline and combined into a single output file (vedba_all_individuals.csv) covering all five collared animals: coyote_12542, coyote_12547, Ed, Martha, and Rahzar. The visualizing_results.R script performs the full activity analysis using that combined file. Key analyses include: Diel activity patterns: mean VeDBA by hour of day, plotted by season (summer = April–September; winter = October–March), both pooled across individuals and faceted per individual. Solar-normalized diel curves: timestamps are converted to a solar-normalized time axis (0 = sunrise, 0.5 = sunset, 1 = next sunrise) using actual daily sunrise and sunset times from the suncalc package at Cape Lookout coordinates (34.8141°N, 76.3606°W). Each burst is classified as day, crepuscular, or night. Seasons are labeled “Nesting/visitor (Apr–Sep)” and “Off-season (Oct–Mar)” in final figures. Nocturnality index: daily activity-weighted proportion of VeDBA occurring at night is computed per individual and summarized per season. A linear mixed model (lmer: daily nocturnality ~ season + (1|individual)) and a paired t-test (summer vs. winter, per individual) are used to test for seasonal differences in nocturnality. Nighttime VeDBA comparison: mean nighttime VeDBA (solar time s ∈ [0.5, 1)) is calculated per period with 95% confidence intervals, and the absolute and percent difference between nesting/visitor season and off-season is reported.
- Type
- Script
- Authors
- Sossover, Daniel
- Date of Issue
- 2025-09-18
- Publisher
- National Park Service
- Units
- CAHA , CALO
- Keywords
- CAHA, CALO, coyote, IMD, inter island movement, Inventory and Assessment Program, Islands, mark and recapture, Movement, National Park Service, NPS, NPS Inventory and Monitoring Division, Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge, Population Dynamics, population modeling, Species Inventory
See also
- Coyote Inventory - Additional Deliverables Overview - for Cape Hatteras and Cape Lookout National Seashores and Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge
- Coyote Inventory - Coyote Collar Data - Geospatial Dataset for Cape Hatteras and Cape Lookout National Seashores and Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge