movedesign: Shiny R app to evaluate sampling design for animal movement studies

Projects focused on movement behaviour and home range are commonplace, but beyond a focus choosing appropriate research questions, there no clear guidelines for such studies. Without these guidelines, designing an animal tracking study to produce reliable estimates of space-use properties (necessary answer basic ecology questions), is often done in ad hoc manner. We developed ‘movedesign’, user-friendly Shiny application, which can be utilized investigate the precision three regularly reported spatial studies: area, speed distance travelled. Conceptually similar statistical power analysis, this application enables users assess degree estimate that may achieved with given sampling design; is, choices regarding data resolution (sampling interval) battery life duration). Leveraging ‘ctmm’ R package, we utilize two methods proven handle many common biases datasets: autocorrelated kernel density estimators (AKDEs) continuous-time (CTSD) estimators. Longer durations required reliably areas via detection sufficient number crossings. In contrast, estimation requires interval short enough ensure statistically significant signature animal's velocity remains data. This addresses key challenges faced by researchers when studies, including trade-off between long high GPS locations collected devices, result compromise estimating or distance. ‘movedesign’ has broad applications decision-makers, supporting them efforts resources achieving optimal design strategy their prioritizing correct deployment decisions insightful outputs, while understanding associated choices.