Biological Earth observation with animal sensors

Jetz, Walter; Tertitski, Grigori; Kays, Roland; Mueller, U.; Wikelski, Martin

doi:10.1016/j.tree.2022.04.012

Cited by 30 publications

(41 citation statements)

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“…For example, individual white storks ( Ciconia ciconia ) and sandhill cranes ( Antigone canadensis ) range from subtropical residents to short-distance migrants to longer-distance migrants moving between northern temperate and tropical zones each year (Krapu et al 2014; Fandos et al 2020; Carlson et al 2021). Here, new technologies such as GPS tracking offer exciting opportunities for assessing individual niches over time and across hierarchies of organismal organization (Jetz et al 2022; Costa-Pereira et al 2022) and complement the presented species-level findings.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Diverse strategies for tracking seasonal environmental niches at hemispheric scale

Cohen

Jetz

2022

Preprint

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Species depend upon a constrained set of environmental conditions, or niches, for survival and reproduction that are being increasingly perturbed or lost under rapid climatic change. Seasonal environments offer an important system to study the range of biological responses to cope with such change, as they require species to either undergo physiological or behavioral changes to sustain altered conditions or to track their niches via movement. Here we use a uniquely well sampled system of 619 New World bird species to identify the tracking of both environmental niche position and breadth and assess its phylogenetic and functional underpinning. We find a diversity of strategies, including the tracking of niche position, niche breadth, both, or neither. Species that track niche position most often also track niche breadth, but nearly 40% only track one component and 26% only track niche breadth and not position. There was only limited phylogenetic determinism to this variation, but a strong association with ecological and functional attributes that differed between niche position vs. niche breadth tracking. The observed diversity in type and strength of niche tracking strategies points to highly differing sensitivity to ongoing climatic change, with narrow trackers of both position and breadth particularly susceptible. The trait associations of niche tracking imply significant functional consequences for communities and ecosystems as impending climate change affects some strategies more strongly than others. Seasonal environments and their diversity of niche tracking strategies offer exceptionally dynamic systems for understanding the biological responses and consequences of climate change.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Diverse strategies for tracking seasonal environmental niches at hemispheric scale

Cohen

Jetz

2022

Preprint

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“…Recapturing can be problematic and prevents real-time observations and analyses of tracked animals. Another promising tracking system is ICARUS [75, 76], but this is under development and tags are estimated to be larger than the lightest tags of ATLAS.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…WATLAS can also support evidence-based nature conservation and management, for example with assessing the impact of anthropogenic activities on space use of shorebirds. More generally, with WATLAS, animals can function as sentinels informing us about the state of the Wadden Sea ecosystem [62, 76], and thus aid nature conservation and management of this globally important ecosystem.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

WATLAS: high throughput and real-time tracking of many small birds in the Dutch Wadden Sea

Bijleveld

Maarseveen

Denissen

et al. 2021

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Movement is a fundamental aspect of life and tracking wild animals under natural conditions has become central to animal behaviour, ecology, and conservation science. Data from tracked animals have provided novel scientific insights on extreme migratory journeys, mechanisms of navigation, space use, and early warning signals of environmental change. Studying movement is therefore important, particularly in systems that may be vulnerable to anthropogenic effects. Technological advancements, and chiefly the development of GPS tags, have enabled animal tracking at high spatiotemporal resolution, yet trade-offs between cost, sampling frequency, tag weight and data retrieval limit the use of GPS tags to relatively few individuals and large species. A new ‘reverse-GPS’ wildlife tracking system, ATLAS, employs an array of receiver stations that detect and localise small (∼0.6 g without battery), low-cost (∼25 euro) tags by calculating differences in the arrival time of tag signal at minimally three stations. In this study, we introduce the Wadden Sea ATLAS system (WATLAS), implemented in the Dutch Wadden Sea, the Netherland’s only natural UNESCO World Heritage Site, yet affected by a suite of anthropogenic activities, such as commercial fishing, mining, shipping, as well as sea level rise. From July 2017 to July 2021, we tracked 821 red knots, 182 sanderlings, 33 bar-tailed godwits, and 6 common terns. With four examples, we illustrate how WATLAS opens-up possibilities for studying space-use, among-individual variation in movement, and intra-specific interactions, and inter-specific (community) space use in the wild. We additionally argue that WATLAS could provide a tool for impact assessment, and thus aid nature conservation and management of the globally important Wadden Sea ecosystem.

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“…New technological developments (e.g. http://icarus.mpg.de), however, are poised to expand the catalogue of species and guilds possessing movement data (Jetz et al, 2022; animallives.org). Importantly, some ecological actors will inevitably be missed since it is impossible to track every individual in a community, and these missed actors could induce substantial bias in community‐level inference.…”

Section: Challengesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Animal tracking moves community ecology: Opportunities and challenges

Costa‐Pereira

Moll

Jesmer

et al. 2022

Journal of Animal Ecology

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Individual decisions regarding how, why and when organisms interact with one another and with their environment scale up to shape patterns and processes in communities. Recent evidence has firmly established the prevalence of intraspecific variation in nature and its relevance in community ecology, yet challenges associated with collecting data on large numbers of individual conspecifics and heterospecifics have hampered integration of individual variation into community ecology. Nevertheless, recent technological and statistical advances in GPS‐tracking, remote sensing and behavioural ecology offer a toolbox for integrating intraspecific variation into community processes. More than simply describing where organisms go, movement data provide unique information about interactions and environmental associations from which a true individual‐to‐community framework can be built. By linking the movement paths of both conspecifics and heterospecifics with environmental data, ecologists can now simultaneously quantify intraspecific and interspecific variation regarding the Eltonian (biotic interactions) and Grinnellian (environmental conditions) factors underpinning community assemblage and dynamics, yet substantial logistical and analytical challenges must be addressed for these approaches to realize their full potential. Across communities, empirical integration of Eltonian and Grinnellian factors can support conservation applications and reveal metacommunity dynamics via tracking‐based dispersal data. As the logistical and analytical challenges associated with multi‐species tracking are surmounted, we envision a future where individual movements and their ecological and environmental signatures will bring resolution to many enduring issues in community ecology.

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Biological Earth observation with animal sensors

Cited by 30 publications

References 0 publications

Diverse strategies for tracking seasonal environmental niches at hemispheric scale

Diverse strategies for tracking seasonal environmental niches at hemispheric scale

WATLAS: high throughput and real-time tracking of many small birds in the Dutch Wadden Sea

Animal tracking moves community ecology: Opportunities and challenges

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