moon_sleeping_sites

Moon and capuchins sleeping sites

Relation between sleeping site height of Black Capuchins (Sapajus nigritus) and Moon illumination

This repository explores how lunar illumination and other environmental variables (e.g. precipitation, canopy structure) influence sleeping site selection in wild Black Capuchin monkeys. The analysis combines GPS data, lunar ephemerides, and remote sensing to investigate how primates may adaptively respond to night-time light conditions.

Overview

Study species: Sapajus nigritus (Black Capuchin Monkey)
Location: Iguazú National Park, Argentina
Key question: Do Black Capuchins choose higher sleeping sites under darker lunar conditions?
Approach: Combine spatial data (GPS), moonlight metrics (via suncalc), canopy height models, and precipitation data to evaluate behavioral patterns.

Highlights

Calculates effective moonlight index:
Combines moon phase and altitude to estimate true perceived nocturnal illumination.
Integrates canopy structure data from remote sensing (Lidar-based CHM).
Links sleeping site use (used vs. available points) to moonlight, canopy height, and precipitation.
Produces interactive plots and static figures via R and ggplot2.

HTML Reports

Moon and Canopy height covariates

The full report is available here.

Buffer sizes and numbers of pseudo-absences

The full report is available here.

Resource Selection Functions

The full analysis and details are available here.

It includes all figures, code, and ecological interpretations.

Key R packages

tidyverse – data wrangling and plotting
suncalc – moon position and phase
terra – raster data handling
geosphere – spatial distance and geometry
viridis – color scales for accessibility

Structure

moon_sleeping_sites/ │ ├── data/ # Raw data (not committed) ├── scripts/ # R scripts used in the analysis ├── output/ # Plots and figures ├── moon_sleeping.Rmd # Main analysis notebook ├── moon_sleeping.html # Rendered HTML report (published) └── README.md # You are here