camtrapR-package: Overview of the functions in the camtrapR package

In camtrapR: Camera Trap Data Management and Analysis Framework

Overview of the functions in the camtrapR package

Description

This package provides a streamlined workflow for processing data generated in camera trap-based wildlife studies and prepares input for further analyses, particularly in occupancy and spatial capture-recapture frameworks. It suggests a simple data structure and provides functions for managing digital camera trap photographs (and videos), generating record tables, maps of species richness and species detections and species activity diagrams. It further helps prepare subsequent analyses by creating detection/non-detection matrices for occupancy analyses, e.g. in the unmarked or ubms packages, and capthist objects for spatial capture-recapture analyses in the secr package. In addition, basic survey statistics are computed. The functions build on one another in a logical sequence. The only manual input needed is species (and individual) identification, which is achieved by moving images into species directories or by tagging images in image management software. Besides, a table holding basic information about camera trap station IDs, locations and trapping periods must be created in spreadsheet software.

Details

Image metadata (such as date and time or user-assigned tags) are extracted from the images using Phil Harvey's ExifTool (available from https://exiftool.org/) and the information is stored in a record table. An adjustable criterion for temporal independence of records can be applied. Maps of species presence and species richness can be generated. Several functions are available for plotting single- and two-species activity patterns. Information about the camera-specific trapping periods (and periods of malfunction) are summarized into a matrix about camera trap operability. These, together with the record table, are used to generate species detection histories for occupancy and spatial capture-recapture analyses. The user has considerable freedom in generating the detection histories; sampling occasion length, beginning date and and occasion start times are adjustable. In addition, trapping effort (i.e. active trap nights per station and occasion) can be computed for use as a covariate / offset on detection probability.

User support

The camtrapR Google group is an online support and help forum for camtrapR users. You can find it here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/camtrapr.

Author(s)

Juergen Niedballa

Maintainer:Juergen Niedballa <[e-mail]>

References

Niedballa, J., Sollmann, R., Courtiol, A., Wilting, A. (2016): camtrapR: an R package for efficient camera trap data management. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 7(12). https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/2041-210X.12600

camtrapR Google Group https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/camtrapr

Lemon, J. (2006) Plotrix: a package in the red light district of R. R-News, 6(4): 8-12.

Mike Meredith and Martin Ridout (2018). overlap: Estimates of coefficient of overlapping for animal activity patterns. R package version 0.3.2. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=overlap

Phil Harvey's ExifTool https://exiftool.org/

See Also

overlap unmarked ubms secr wiqid

camtrapR documentation built on July 28, 2026, 5:10 p.m.