A new approach to geostatistical synthesis of historical records reveals capuchin spatial responses to climate and demographic change

The recent proliferation of GPS technology has transformed animal movement research. Yet, time-series data from this recent technology rarely span beyond a decade, constraining longitudinal research. Long-term field sites hold valuable historic animal location records, including hand-drawn maps and semantic descriptions. Here, we introduce a generalized workflow for converting such records into reliable location data to estimate home ranges, using 30 years of sleep-site data from 11 white-faced capuchin (Cebus imitator) groups in Costa Rica. Our findings illustrate that historic sleep locations can reliably recover home range size and geometry. We showcase the opportunity our approach presents to resolve open questions that can only be addressed with very long-term data, examining how home ranges are affected by climate cycles and demographic change. We urge researchers to translate historical records into usable movement data before this knowledge is lost; it is essential to understand..., , , # A new approach to geostatistical synthesis of historical records reveals capuchin spatial responses to climate and demographic change

#### Raw sleep site data:

Here we present two chunks of data that were created in the process of converting early historical data to something that could be linked to GPS locations so that the full process can be understood. We did not provide the more recent data for conservation reasons, as we want to protect the locations of habituated primates. Scientists with a legitimate reason to see the full data set can contact Susan Perry for more information.

`Sleepsites_1997_oddshift.csv`

`SleepsitesAA1990-95_bjbshift.csv`

The file `Sleepsites_1997_oddshift.csv` is from the first season in which electronic devices (Psion Observers) were used to record data in the field (though these were still supplemented with field notes having hand-drawn maps to help us find sleep sites the following morning, as this was our first field season working with RR group, ...