Making better use of tracking data can reveal the spatiotemporal and intraspecific variability of species distributions

Understanding geographic ranges and species distributions is crucial for effective conservation, especially in the light of climate and land use change. However, the spatial, temporal and intraspecific resolution of digital accessible information on species distributions is often limited. Here, we suggest to make better use of high-resolution tracking data to address existing limitations of occurrence records such as spatial biases (e.g. lack of observations in parts of the geographic range), temporal biases (e.g. lack of observations during a certain period of the year), and insufficient information on intraspecific variability (e.g. lack of population- or individual-level variation). Addressing these gaps can improve our knowledge on geographic ranges, intra-annual changes in species distributions, and population-level differences in habitat and space use. We demonstrate this with tracking data and species distribution models (SDMs) of the Barnacle Goose, a migratory bird species wint..., Tracking data was obtained from the Movebank Data Repository using the following studies: 

van der Jeugd, H. P., Oosterbeek, K., Ens, B. J., Shamoun-Baranes, J., & Exo, K. (2014). Data from: Forecasting spring from afar? Timing of migration and predictability of phenology along different migration routes of an avian herbivore [Barents Sea data]. [dataset]. https://doi.org/10.5441/001/1.ps244r11 
Heim, W., Piironen, A., Heim, R. J., Piha, M., Seimola, T., Forsman, J. T., & Laaksonen, T. (2022). Data from: Effects of multiple targeted repelling measures on the behaviour of individually tracked birds in an area of increasing human-wildlife conflict [Csv]. Movebank Data Repository. https://doi.org/10.5441/001/1.VD7JB526 
Griffin, L. (2014). Data from: Forecasting spring from afar? Timing of migration and predictability of phenology along different migration routes of an avian herbivore [Svalbard data]. Movebank Data Repository. https://doi.org/10.5441/001/1.5K6B1364 
Garthe, S. (20..., , # Data from: Making better use of tracking data can reveal the spatiotemporal and intraspecific variability of species distributions

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.zw3r228fd](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.zw3r228fd)

## Description of the data and file structure

The uploaded data file contains processed tracking data from tracking datasets available for public download via Movebank. Using the package \"movepub\" (Desmet 2023) to Darwin Core standards, tracking data is sub-sampled to the first record for each hour.

Columns \"license\", \"license holder\" and \"datasetID\" provide information on the original tracking data set, giving the license under which it was published, the contact person for the study, and the DOI (if available respectively). In the absence of a \"license\", \"license holder\" or doi, \"NA\" values are provided, representing \"not available\".

Columns \"institutionCode\", \"collectionCode\" and \"datasetName\" provide information on the institute responsible for data storage (MPIAB, ...