A hidden Markov model for reconstructing animal paths from solar geolocation loggers using templates for light intensity

Table 1 Review of the differences of the existing methods together with rationale for the current contribution

	Customary approach^a	Ekstrom (2007)	Nielsen & Siebert (2007)	Sumner et al. 2009	Current contribution
R package	GeoLight		Trackit	TripEstimation	FLightR^b
Few points per twilight	+			+−	+
Shading cloud cover free		+		+	+
Optimisation		least squares	UKF	MCMC (block update)	particle filter
Movement allowed			+	+	+
Landscape mask				+	+
Migratory-sedentary switch					+
Behavioural-landscape masks					+
Positions	+ − (not close the equinox)	+	+	+	+
Assesment of precision of estimates			+	+	+
Distribution of possible positions				+	+
Distribution of possible transitions					+

^afor the details on customary threshold methods one should refer to Hill [44]; Hill & Braun [6]; Ekstrom [7]); ^bFLightR package (availiable at https://github.com/eldarrak/FLightR) is at the late development stage