Description
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) have collected and curated Global Positioning System (GPS) locations from GPS-enabled Tellus Ultralight neck-collars placed on bobcats (Lynx rufus) in Texas. Bobcats were captured in box-traps, sedated, anesthetized, fit with a GPS collar, and released on USFWS lands following protocols in Sternberg and Swarts (2021) (https://doi.org/10.7944/pbwy-se62 and https://doi.org/10.7944/wx3d-jd10). This dataset includes 51,223 GPS locations from 30 male or female bobcats being monitored from 2013 to 2021. Locations in this dataset occur on and around Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge. These locations are stored using latitude and longitude with a WGS84 reference system.
USE CONSTRAINTS
Although these data have been subjected to rigorous review and are substantially complete, the USFWS reserves the right to revise the data pursuant to further analysis and review. These data are released on condition that neither the USFWS nor the U.S. Government shall be held liable for any damages resulting from its authorized or unauthorized use.
Data Records
The data in this occurrence resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 51,223 records.
2 extension data tables also exist. An extension record supplies extra information about a core record. The number of records in each extension data table is illustrated below.
This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.
Versions
The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.
How to cite
Researchers should cite this work as follows:
Sternberg M, Swarts H, Young J, Moczygemba J (2025). GPS locations of Bobcats on and around Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge from 2013-2021: USFWS-TXDOT Collaborative Dataset. Version 1.0. United States Fish and Wildlife Service. Samplingevent dataset. https://doi.org/10.7944/dnyt-va16
Rights
Researchers should respect the following rights statement:
The publisher and rights holder of this work is United States Fish and Wildlife Service. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY 4.0) License.
GBIF Registration
This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: a219ac95-05f3-4ded-b294-bed67877c200. United States Fish and Wildlife Service publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by GBIF-US.
Keywords
Samplingevent; Observation; bobcat; capture; Felidae; GPS; Lynx rufus; mammal; observation; occurrence; Refuge; Texas; USA
Contacts
- User
- Zone Biologist
- Originator
- Refuge Manager
- HC 60 Box 860, Ruby Lake National Wildlife Refuge
- Originator
- Originator
Geographic Coverage
West -97.712 East -97.24 South 26.121 North 26.647
Bounding Coordinates | South West [26.054, -98.248], North East [26.349, -97.301] |
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Taxonomic Coverage
Bobcat (Lynx rufus) Kingdom Animalia Phylum Chordata Class Mammalia Order Carnivora Family Felidae
Kingdom | Animalia |
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Phylum | Chordata |
Class | Mammalia |
Order | Carnivora |
Family | Felidae |
Temporal Coverage
Start Date / End Date | 2013-05-16 / 2021-04-02 |
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Project Data
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) have collected and curated Global Positioning System (GPS) locations from GPS-enabled Tellus Ultralight neck-collars placed on bobcats (Lynx rufus) in Texas. Bobcats were captured in box-traps, sedated, anesthetized, fit with a GPS collar, and released on USFWS lands following protocols in Sternberg and Swarts (2021) (https://doi.org/10.7944/pbwy-se62 and https://doi.org/10.7944/wx3d-jd10). This dataset includes 51,223 GPS locations from 30 male or female bobcats being monitored from 2013 to 2021. Locations in this dataset occur on and around Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge. These locations are stored using latitude and longitude with a WGS84 reference system.
Title | GPS locations of Bobcats on and around Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge from 2013-2021: USFWS-TXDOT Collaborative Dataset |
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Identifier | https://doi.org/10.7944/dnyt-va16 |
Funding | Major funding was provided by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Texas Department of Transportation, and the Friends of Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge. |
Study Area Description | The data occurs on and around Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge located in Cameron County, Texas, USA. |
Design Description | Bobcats were being monitored as part of the long-term management and recovery program focusing on federally endangered ocelots on and around Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge, managed by the USFWS, when the monitoring program was being led by USFWS from 1992 to 2021. Bobcats can be a surrogate for understanding the movements of endangered ocelots. Bobcats were captured in box-traps, sedated, anesthetized, fit with a GPS collar, and released from 2013 to 2021 following protocols in Sternberg and Swarts (2021) (https://doi.org/10.7944/wx3d-jd10). |
The personnel involved in the project:
Sampling Methods
GPS locations of bobcats were acquired on a variable schedule depending on the needs to monitor each specific bobcat as determined by USFWS staff. GPS locations ranged from every 30 minutes to as few as two locations in a 24-hour period. There are two separate datasets containing GPS locations of bobcats on and around Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife from this timeframe (i.e., the current dataset, and a dataset solely collected by USFWS released in May 2025). All locations represent locations of bobcats freely moving about in the wild. All data provided are accurate and unaltered locations of wild bobcats, including shortly after recovery from anesthesia and the bobcat having been released back into the wild to the time at which the collar was retrieved from the bobcat.
Study Extent | Locations were collected from GPS collars attached to bobcats on and around Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge, located in Cameron County, Texas, USA. Some bobcats received multiple collars over the 2013-2021 study period. |
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Quality Control | A dataset was curated by USFWS staff previously from the Farm-to-Market 106 road expansion project (also known as “Monitoring Ocelot and Bobcat Use of Wildlife Underpasses”). Those data included some of the data in the current dataset, but the current dataset is improved so that users do not need to be intimate with the data procedures to select the most appropriate part of the older dataset to use. For the current dataset, data were scrutinized a bit more as it was noted that some of the location data acquired from several collars early in their deployment were while the cat was still in a trap recovering from anesthesia about to be released back to the wild, or later in their deployment were from a collar which had fallen off of the cat and was yet to be noted as such, retrieved and then data collection was terminated. We thought it more appropriate to remove those non-data from this more refined dataset for wider public use. The dataset has gone through a cleaning and georeferencing process to ensure GPS points and location information is accurate. All data associated with testing each collar were removed. If a collar malfunctioned, its battery died, the collar was removed or replaced with a new collar on the bobcat, etc, a note was made in the eventRemarks column. Coordinates for locations are provided in decimal degrees and should be considered accurate to within 10 m given our testing with these GPS collars. As with similar GPS collars/devices, altitude is not a very reliable metric in this dataset, neither in precision nor accuracy in our experience, but it is provided as researchers may find some use in these estimated values. Likewise, we would not recommend using altitude to estimate accuracy of the GPS locations. The time of each location as in the eventTime column was calculated from Greenwich Mean Time that was originally recorded with each location. Time (eventTime) was adjusted to Central Standard Time for the USA with seasonal adjustments for Daylight Savings Time. Terms in the dataset are in accordance with those set by the Darwin Core (DwC) Standard (Darwin Core Task Group, 2021) or a similar standard, and terms are described in the Additional Metadata section of this document. |
Method step description:
- 1. Trap a bobcat. 2. Sedate, and anesthetize the bobcat. 3. Attach a GPS-enabled and pre-programmed collar on the bobcat. 4. Acquire locations from: a. email delivery from the collar on a predetermined schedule using the local cellular network, or b. manual download data in the field by contacting the collar remotely and copying data to a laptop computer using a UHF antenna and download cable, or c. download the data by direct download through the micro-USB port on the collar onto a laptop once the collar is retrieved. 5. Assess accuracy of each location based on location of initial trapping, frequent tracking of the collar using VHF (during 2-hour beacon periods only on certain days to conserve battery life of the collar), and overlaying locations with known local boundaries and habitats using the ArcGIS software platform.
Additional Metadata
The USFWS uses standard data terms like Darwin Core terms in this dataset whenever possible to describe some of the data fields for each record. Darwin Core is a suite of standards terms, labels, and definitions that assist the scientific community in the sharing of biodiversity information (Darwin Core Task Group 2021) (http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/index.htm). These data used Darwin Core to keep USFWS datasets similar to that required by the Global Biodiversity Infrastructure Facility (GBIF). In doing so, the dataset is improved to a higher standard of data organization and similar to other datasets we will, or have already, released. Terms were also used from the Extended Measurement or Fact extension (eMoF) in Darwin Core. The eMoF extension is a standard for documenting measurements and facts related to both sampling events and species occurrences. We also used standard terms from the Movebank Attribute Dictionary (hereafter “Movebank” below) when no similar term was found in either the main terms of Darwin Core or the eMoF extension. Terms used in Movebank describe studies, events (e.g., collar locations), deployments and tags. The Movebank vocabulary can be cited as follows: Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior. 2024. Movebank Attribute Dictionary. British Oceanographic Data Centre, Natural Environment Research Council Vocabulary Server. http://vocab.nerc.ac.uk/collection/MVB. Users of the dataset should refer to those sources if more clarity is needed about a given field, or how it might relate to information from other databases. Some cells may refer to other datasets. Keep in mind there is a complementary dataset on the Service Catalog (https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/181747). While some terms are self-explanatory, the following terms are those typical of Darwin Core and GBIF.org. Some may seem repetitive, unnecessary, and of little use to users but they were included as they had been part of the larger dataset during curation: type, eventType, basisOfRecord, occurrenceID (a good row to use to sort data given these unique codes), ownerInstitutionCode, institutionID, samplingProtocol, scientificName, scientificNameID, vernacularName, sex, eventTime, occurrenceStatus, eventRemarks, continent, countryCode, stateProvince, county, altitude, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus. Each term that deserved a more detailed explanation is listed below. The term “license” which is populated by “CC BY 4.0” signifies the data is being provided under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, granting others the freedom to share, adapt, and build upon our work, if they properly credit the authors, and the agencies or “institutions” as Darwin Core refers to them. The term “license” is a Darwin Core term. The term “accessRights” shall remain with this data in any way that you use it. This is a Darwin Core term. The term “samplingProtocol” is a link to the Digital Object Identifier (and access to the file) for the USFWS Standard Operating Procedures used to collect and process the data. This can be placed in your internet search browser and will resolve at a site on the internet where the file can be reviewed or downloaded. This is a Darwin Core term. The term “lifeStage” was a rough estimate of age (i.e., juvenile or adult) based in part on the study of ocelots in Texas, wherein the weight of ocelots appeared to be correlated with age in the kitten and juvenile stages of life (see the next chart). Ocelots were classified as adults when their age was estimated to be 2 or more years. These estimates were applied to bobcats as well. The term “lifeStage” is a Darwin Core term. Age estimated based on measured mass/weight at the time of capture and handling 0 - 5 months = 3.4 kg or less 6 - 11 months = 3.4 - 6 kg 12 - 17 months = 5.1 - 6.6 kg 18 - 23 months = 6.2 - 7.2 kg Only two bobcats (i.e., BM291 and BM306) were considered juveniles at the time of capture. When BM291 was captured on May 5, 2014, he was estimated to be 12-14 months old and weighed 6.6 kg. When BM306 was captured on May 9, 2015, he was estimated to be 12-18 months old and weighed 7.0 kg. Users should use the data relating to lifeStage for these young bobcats carefully considering their proximity to age estimates and how those estimates were derived. Under “organismName”, "BF" signifies bobcat female, and "BM" signifies bobcat male. The three-digit code following the alpha-code was a unique number assigned to each individual ocelot and bobcat uniquely identified as part of the cat monitoring program at the Refuge; a system that was accurate and consistent since approximately 2007. This is a Darwin Core term. The term “collarSerial” provides the serial number for a particular collar that was deployed on a bobcat. Some bobcats may have had multiple collars deployed on them if caught across various seasons. Some collars had a slightly different data acquisition schedule. Also, some collars may have performed better than others. Users may find use in comparing across collar deployments. The term is part of the Measurement Or Fact extension. The term “eventTime” in this dataset is the time in Central Standard Time accounting for Daylight Savings Time. In some complementary datasets eventTime was written to ISO 8600 format where the -0500 or -0600 is appended after the time and is provided to recognize the offset from Greenwich Mean Time (accounting for Daylight Savings Time) as a standard under DarwinCore. The term “geodeticDatum” was used to inform users that the datum for the calculation of the decimal degree coordinates was based on the WGS84 reference system. Original locations were in Universal Transverse Mercator and converted to decimal degrees in latitude and longitude using ArcGIS Pro 3.7.1. Due to our expertise using these collars we were confident in estimating the term “coordinateUncertaintyInMeters” to be 10 m of accuracy. Each of those are Darwin Core terms. The term eventRemarks was used to provide a note relating to the collar’s deployment or functionality (e.g., errors or something odd to consider in using the data, and or when the collar was dropped using a remote command device). This is a Darwin Core term. In some complementary datasets the term “organismRemarks” may have been used and can be considered synonymous with “eventRemarks”. As the information describes the event as opposed to some character of the organism, this term has been changed to “eventRemarks” in more recent datasets. The term “GPS time to fix" is the amount of time (in seconds) it took the Tellus collar system to acquire a GPS location. When collars were programmed USFWS had the opportunity to require the collar to get a location within a certain timeframe or to wait until the next scheduled time if a location cannot be obtained in the allotted time; this was to conserve battery in cases where the collar was working too long to get a position. If for example the Time to Fix was set to a maximum of 90 sec the value will never be over 90. USFWS staff do not recall a time limit being programmed. Values in the dataset range from 30-119 seconds. This is a Movebank term. The term “altitude” (in meters) was estimated for the GPS collar location by the Tellus collar system. These data were not considered accurate or precise by USFWS but a general reference. This is a Darwin Core term. The term “GPS HDOP” stands for Horizontal Dilution of Precision of the GPS collar. It is a measure calculated from the geometry of the GPS satellites used to determine the GPS collar location. This is a fraction as in “1.8”. It is unitless. This is a Movebank term. The term “GPS satellite count” as per a note from the collar manufacturer: Number of satellites that were used to fix the position, usually a value between 3 and 12. This is a Movebank term. The term “activity x” is an estimate of the lateral movement/activity of the GPS collar at the time of the location. Note from manufacturer: Movement corresponding to the animal leaning the head up and down (nodding). This figure can be a value between 0-180. This is a Movebank term. The term “activity y” is an estimate of the vertical movement/activity of the GPS collar at the time of the location. Note from manufacturer: Movement corresponding to the animal shaking its head. This figure can be a value between 0-180. This is a Movebank term. The term “temperature”, as per the manufacturer, is a measure of temperature inside the GPS collar and is an estimate of the collared animal’s temperature in degrees Celsius. This value is affected by both the ambient and the body temperature. Note that if the collar is exposed to direct sunlight, this temperature may be higher than the surrounding air temperature, as the sunlight increases the temperature in the GPS collar. Also, because the temperature sensor is built inside the main housing, a sudden rise or fall in air temperature will be recorded with some delay (as it takes some time before the temperature inside the unit reaches the surrounding air temperature). This is a Movebank term. The term “recordedBy” are the names of the individuals that were responsible for handling the animal, placing a collar on it, and/or curating the dataset. This is a Darwin Core term. The term “recordedByID” is the Open Researcher and Collaborator Identification (ORCID) codes unique to those individuals named in the “recordedBy” cell. This is a Darwin Core term. For any data that were not recorded, the value entered was “NR”. **** NOTE: The bobcat named as “BF293” was part of an experiment to translocate a young adult bobcat from a distant USFWS tract to practice conservation translocation to train USFWS staff in the application of a recovery action staff would undertake for the endangered ocelot population at Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge. The bobcat moved away from the release site on the Refuge into the study area for the FM 106 project, so USFWS agreed to allow the data of this individual to became part of this collaborative USFWS-TXDOT data set. This is referenced in brevity under eventRemarks. ****
Acknowledgements | <p>Many U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service staff and volunteers, Student Conservation Association interns, and partners contributed to this project, including B. Severson, M. Severson, S. Perez, K. McDowell, G. Harris, B. Radabaugh, C. Knight, C. Wildermuth, R. Lyon, J. Smith, H. Frederick, V. Van Quill, P. McGovern, R. Gelston, G. Schmidt, D. Kuhn, R. Thomas-Kuzilik, E. Lustig, E. Saldo, E. Hope, A. Liang, N. Fogel, C. Horton, V. Locke, E. Peterson, M. Butler-Valverde, K. Shupe, K. Crandall, C. Hickling, M. Picillo, and G. Chio. Dr. T. deMaar, Gladys Porter Zoo, provided technical guidance and assistance in the sedation, anesthesia, and care for live-trapped animals. Funding for one intern was provided by the Houston Zoo. Students and researchers from the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley (formerly the University of Texas, Brownsville) also contributed to this project, including R. Kline, S. Nordlof Affeldt, K. Dick Bauer, M. Hopkins, A. Mehner, C. Brett, and M. Picillo. USFWS staff that provided significant field-level assistance on the project were K. Marklevits, S. Miller, and B. Blihovde. Thanks to S. Lehnen for curating an earlier version of this dataset. Major funding was provided by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Texas Department of Transportation, and the Friends of Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge.</p> |
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Introduction | <p>USFWS staff deployed large, single-door, traps with attached bait cages containing live pigeons to trap and collar bobcats. Trapping and handling protocols followed those of Sternberg & Swarts (2021). </p> |
Getting Started | <p>USFWS staff deployed large, single-door, traps with attached bait cages containing live pigeons to trap and collar bobcats. Trapping and handling protocols followed those of Sternberg & Swarts (2021). </p> |
Purpose | The purpose of these GPS-collar data from bobcats was to assist the USFWS in monitoring the use of the landscape by bobcats, as a corollary for assessing likely movements on the landscape by the federally endangered ocelot in Texas, and possible use of roadway underpasses by wildlife in general. The publication of these data will hopefully encourage further contributions of similar data to the public from other groups, as well as to provide data for scientific analyses that can inform the management of wildlife in relation to their interactions with roadway underpasses and other uses to benefit the conservation of wildlife and their habitat. |
Maintenance Description | No additional data are planned to be added to this dataset. |
Alternative Identifiers | https://ipt.gbif.us/resource?r=gps_locations_of_bobcats_on_laguna_atascosa_national_wildlife_refuge |