Data formatting (eg camera trap) for occupancy models.

Individuals requiring assistance with occupancy analyses, particularly single and multi-species analyses, may encounter difficulties during data formatting and error correction. These tasks can be time-consuming and problematic for successful analysis.

To aid in this process, a sample spreadsheet on Google Drive has been created to demonstrate appropriate data formatting and error detection for occupancy analysis. Additionally, a website using Shiny has been developed to rearrange data into various formats, including those required to run analyses using the unmarked package in R. The website also automatically fills in zeros and NAs when needed, which can be a laborious task in R.

Attached are three spreadsheets used as input on the website and a script that explains how to use the data to run occupancy analyses in unmarked. The data can be used in multi-species occupancy models and other Bayesian occupancy models. Attachment

This resource is designed to help simplify the occupancy analysis process for individuals.

References:

MacKenzie, D.I., Nichols, J.D., Lachman, G.B., Droege, S., Andrew Royle, J. & Langtimm, C.A. (2002) Estimating site occupancy rates when detection probabilities are less than one. Ecology, 83, 2248–2255.