Animal-borne technologies in wildlife research and conservation

Abstract

The use of animal-borne devices in wildlife ecology and conservation has expanded in recent decades. Animal-borne devices allow a suite of data to be collected, including locational, acoustic, and video. They have revolutionized our ability to collect measurements from animals and the environments that they inhabit, as well as promote the conservation of many species in their natural habitats. However, the use of these devices can also carry animal welfare, ethical, and privacy implications, device costs can limit the deployment of sufficient units, and the complexity of suitable analytical methods can limit inferences made. This chapter covers these topics by discussing how animal-borne devices, and particularly tracking technologies, are currently used in wildlife conservation and ecology. In particular, we discuss how and why animal-borne devices have advanced the study of wildlife, review key animal-borne devices in use today, and discuss the challenges and limitations of their use, as well as future opportunities, by drawing upon real-world examples from research and conservation.

From Soundwave to Soundscape: A Guide to Acoustic Research in Captive Animal Environments

“…It is also possible to set a logger to filter out unwanted sounds ( 155 ) such as human speech, which may be important for confidentiality reasons ( 159 ). Conservation technology is a burgeoning field, leading to the rapid development of ARUs ( 10 ) with compact size for animal-borne recording [see the μMoth, ( 160 )] and low-cost underwater use [see the Hydromoth, ( 161 )]. Many practical issues ARUs have experienced in the field (such as the absorbance of long-range radio signals by dense vegetation) are presumably less of an issue in captive environments because they are smaller and more hospitable.…”

Telemetry tails: a practical method for attaching animal-borne devices to small vertebrates in the field

“…For smaller taxa, where ABD weight and battery size (i.e. capacity) is limited, postprocessing of fixes can help avoid the common trade-off between ABD size and data output (McMahon et al 2017;Rafiq et al 2021b). Radio frequency identification (RFID) tags and loggers can be used as an alternative to GPS for remote data collection and download in smaller taxa (Ripperger et al 2020;Rafiq et al 2021a).…”

“…location and activity), and the environment in which they live (e.g. air temperature, depth) (Rafiq et al 2021b). Data can be collected by tracking an animal and manually recording its location (e.g.…”

“…via radio-telemetry) or remotely (e.g. via satellite global positioning system (GPS); see Rafiq et al (2021b) for a detailed description of sensors used in ecological research). Traditional tracking methods (e.g.…”

SensorDrop: A system to remotely detach individual sensors from wildlife tracking collars

“…For example, audio recorders have helped quantify the hunting performance of predators (Studd et al, 2021 ), video recorders are giving new insights into the cues species use to navigate (Yoshino et al, 2020 ), and accelerometers are elucidating the energetic consequences of animal behaviors (Nickel et al, 2021 ). While the specific attachment mechanisms used to deploy sensors onto wildlife vary with species‐ and locale‐specific characteristics, one commonly used mechanism for many medium to large terrestrial species is the wildlife tracking collar (herein wildlife collars) (for an overview see Rafiq, Pitcher, et al, 2021 ).…”