Visual Exploration of Movement Relatedness for Multi-species Ecology Analysis

Abstract: Advances in GPS telemetry technology have enabled analysis of animal movement in open areas. Ecologists today are utilizing modern analytic tools to study animal behaviors from large quantity of GPS coordinates. Analytic tools with automatic event extraction functionality can be used to investigate potential interactions between animals by locating relevant segments in movement trajectories. However, such automation can easily overlook the spatial, temporal, social context as well as potential data problems. To this end, this paper explores the visual presentations that also clarify the spatial-temporal contexts, social surroudings, as well as underlying data uncertainties of multi-species animal interactions. The outcome system presents the proximity-based, time-varying relatedness between animal entities through pairwise (PW) or individual-to-group (i-G) perspectives. Focusing on the relational aspects, we employ both static depictions and animations to communicate the travelling of individuals. Our contributions are a novel visualization system that helps investigate the subtle variations of long term spatial-temporal relatedness while considering small group patterns. Our evaluation with movement ecologists shows that the system gives them quick access to valuable clues in discovering insights into multi-species movements and signs of potential interactions.