Spatial clustering of chimpanzee locations for neighborhood identification

Sandeep Mane, Carson Murray, Shashi Shekhar, Jaideep Srivastava, Anne Pusey

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

4 Scopus citations

Abstract

Since 1960, the chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) of Gombe National Park, Tanzania, have been studied by behavioral ecologists, including Jane Goodall. Data have been collected for more than 40 years and are being analyzed by researchers in order to increase our understanding of the social structure of chimpanzees. In this paper, we consider the following question of interest to behavioral ecologists -"Does clustering exist among female chimpanzees in terms of their spatial locations ?" The analysis of this question will help behavioral ecologists to learn about the space use and the social interactions between female chimpanzees. The data collected for this analysis are marked spatial point patterns over the park. Current spatial clustering methods lack the ability to handle such marked point patterns directly. This paper presents a novel application of spatial point pattern analysis and data mining techniques to the ecological problem of clustering female chimpanzees. We found that Ripley's K-function provides a powerful statistical tool for evaluating clustering behavior among spatial point patterns. We then proposed two clustering approaches for marked point patterns using the K-function. Experimental results using the proposed clustering methods provide significant insight into the dynamics of female chimpanzee space use and into the overall social stucture of the species. In addition, the proposed methods can be extended to also include temporal information.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings - Fifth IEEE International Conference on Data Mining, ICDM 2005
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages4-8
Number of pages5
ISBN (Print)0769522785, 9780769522784
DOIs
StatePublished - 2005
Event5th IEEE International Conference on Data Mining, ICDM 2005 - Houston, TX, United States
Duration: Nov 27 2005Nov 30 2005

Publication series

NameProceedings - IEEE International Conference on Data Mining, ICDM
ISSN (Print)1550-4786

Other

Other5th IEEE International Conference on Data Mining, ICDM 2005
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityHouston, TX
Period11/27/0511/30/05

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Spatial clustering of chimpanzee locations for neighborhood identification'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this