Animal behaviour on the move: the use of auxiliary information and semi-supervision to improve behavioural inferences from Hidden Markov Models applied to GPS tracking datasets

Abstract

Background State-space models, such as Hidden Markov Models (HMMs), are increasingly used to classify animal tracks into behavioural states. Typically, step length and turning angles of successive locations are used to infer where and when an animal is resting, foraging, or travelling. However, the accuracy of behavioural classifications is seldom validated, which may badly contaminate posterior analyses. In general, models appear to efficiently infer behaviour in species with discrete foraging and travelling areas, but classification is challenging for species foraging opportunistically across homogenous environments, such as tropical seas. Here, we use a subset of GPS loggers deployed simultaneously with wet-dry data from geolocators, activity measurements from accelerometers, and dive events from Time Depth Recorders (TDR), to improve the classification of HMMs of a large GPS tracking dataset (478 deployments) of red-billed tropicbirds (Phaethon aethereus), a poorly studied pantropical seabird. Methods We classified a subset of fixes as either resting, foraging or travelling based on the three auxiliary sensors and evaluated the increase in overall accuracy, sensitivity (true positive rate), specificity (true negative rate) and precision (positive predictive value) of the models in relation to the increasing inclusion of fixes with known behaviours. Results We demonstrate that even with a small informed sub-dataset (representing only 9% of the full dataset), we can significantly improve the overall behavioural classification of these models, increasing model accuracy from 0.77 ± 0.01 to 0.85 ± 0.01 (mean ± sd). Despite overall improvements, the sensitivity and precision of foraging behaviour remained low (reaching 0.37 ± 0.06, and 0.06 ± 0.01, respectively). Conclusions This study demonstrates that the use of a small subset of auxiliary data with known behaviours can both validate and notably improve behavioural classifications of state space models of opportunistic foragers. However, the improvement is state-dependant and caution should be taken when interpreting inferences of foraging behaviour from GPS data in species foraging on the go across homogenous environments.