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WILDLABS logoWildlabs.net : The conservation technology network

Group

Animal Movement / Feed

Animal movement technologies are revolutionizing our understanding of wildlife, revealing insights like migration patterns, key corridors, and the impacts of mounting pressures on natural systems. As we continue to develop these tools and work toward translating movement data into actionable insights, coordination between efforts is essential. This group is a place for the animal movement community to connect and discuss our efforts to advance the field.

Group curators

discussion

Questions regarding the use of solar panels to extend battery life of GPS collars

Travis Bayer

6 January 2024 8:44pm

Hey!If anyone here has had any experience using solar panels to extend the battery life of their tracking collars, I would love to hear from you! How effective was the...

17 1
Lars Holst Hansen

24 January 2024 10:45am

With a Vectronic Vertex Plus 2D collar, 32Hz 3D acceleration and 15min position fix intervals you can expect between 3-6 months of lifetime using Iridium as position transfer.

This project seem to be using both 2D and 3D sized collars on lions:

https://www.vectronic-aerospace.com/projects/#KopeLion

 

Travis Bayer

28 January 2024 10:27pm

Lars,

As always, your insights are great! The GPS Plus X battery life calculator is great! I've downloaded it and have been toying around with it, very convenient when thinking about sampling schedules. Curious as to why more tech developers don't incorporate something similar into their own programming/analysis software. Very useful.

I've got a few meetings set up with a couple different tech developers, but may reach to Vectronic here. At first glance, their collars seem great! I appreciate the recommendations.

 

I must admit, I am not well versed in Python, but I am looking into something that wold be the R equivalent. If I don't have much luck, I may try and take a look at how that package was made in Python and attempt to recreate it in R.

 

You're the best Lars! Thanks!

 

Cheers,

Travis

Travis Bayer

28 January 2024 10:42pm

Hi Bill,

I don't believe I will need them to be extremely accurate, but will need a good degree of accuracy for some behavioral classification and habitat use analyses. In regards to the solar, tracking the solar cycle is a great suggestion. I have also considered having some thresholds programmed in the accelerometer to power off both sensors during periods of sleep/rest in order to conserve battery life. I did this same thing in my last study for the GPS only, so there wouldn't be instances where the trackers continued to try and unsuccessfully acquire GPS fixes while the bats where inside their caves resting. After the bat's surge axis dropped into the -1 and there was 10 unsuccessful GPS fix attempts in a row, the GPS powered down.

 

Thanks for the suggestions and insights Bill!

 

Best,

Travis

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discussion

Cat Island, Bahamas biologger recovery

Alasdair Davies

7 December 2023 9:57pm

Hi everyone,A random request to see if any WILDLAB members may live in, or near the Bahamas on the off chance that you could help to recover one of our plastic...

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Thomas Gray

12 January 2024 4:07pm

Were you guys able to recover the tag? @Alasdair 

Herdhanu Jayanto

17 January 2024 6:05pm

Hi Alasdair,

I am also curious with the result, were you able to recover the tag? Also is there any that ended up in Indonesia sea? We would love to help the recovery if any.

Cheers,

Dhanu

Alasdair Davies

23 January 2024 2:37pm

Hi @ThomasGray_Argos, @YvanSG  and @hjayanto,

Thank you all for getting in touch. Luckily the Cat Island Institute via YME Bahamas got in touch and prepared an expedition to recover it. They couldn't access the beach during the first attempt, but a second attempt is planned. I'll hopefully be able to recover it shortly. 

Thanks again,

Alasdair

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discussion

Open-source kinetic energy harvesting collar - Kinefox

Thomas Gray

1 November 2023 5:31pm

Hello everyone,I ran across an article today (at the bottom) that talks about an open-source, kinetic energy harvesting collar ("Kinefox"). It sounds pretty neat...anyways,...

6 3
Herdhanu Jayanto

17 January 2024 7:45pm

This is super cool! 

I was wondering if the development will further touch marine or aquatic animals, make it like water wheel (even might give burden to aerodynamic). Thank you for sharing!

Best,

Dhanu

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discussion

How to build my VHF tags from the scratch?

Simon Ripperger

9 January 2019 10:04am

Hi all, I was wondering if anybody has experience in building VHF-tags from the scratch. I couldn't find useful instructions online, so maybe anybody wants to share own...

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discussion

What is your favorite package or software for visualizing animal tracking data?

Lacey Hughey

12 September 2023 6:52pm

Hi all,I manage a large research collaborative focused on conservation applications of animal tracking data (Smithsonian's Movement of Life Initiative).  I'm interested in...

25 3
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Link

Semi-automated prediction of behavioral states in wild understudied King vultures (Sarcoramphus papa)

Tobias Petri

20 December 2023 1:34pm

For the current e-obs newsletter, Chris Beirne and I have summarized our previous work on the annotation of King vultures in Costa Rica.

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discussion

Seeking Host Organisations for Travel Scholarship Application

Eva Neill

19 December 2023 12:54am

Hi all,I'm Eva, a final year undergraduate studying Joint Honours Biology and Geography at the University of St Andrews.  I've recently joined the WildLabs community in...

1 0
Herdhanu Jayanto

20 December 2023 3:07am

Hi Eva, 

Me and my colleagues run a small NGO based on Yogyakarta in Indonesia, although our projects are spread around the country. One of our active project is working with the movement ecology of Sunda gharials in Berbak-Sembilang National Park. One of the other is for Malayan Giant Turtle conservation using one-plan approach, which we are planning to start in situ phase. We can't give you promise about anything, but are able to be the host organization and would love to talk the opportunity!

Cheers,

Dhanu

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discussion

Which market-available microphones, accelerometers and GIS sensors for dogs / pets ?

Luigi

7 September 2023 3:21pm

I have conducted an MSc thesis in data-science applied on bioacoustics data, and wish to carry on some experiments on my own now, using domestic environment as a lab.I am looking...

6 2
Luigi

6 December 2023 2:03pm

good to know that GPS coordinates can be used to sync the time. 
Does GPS resolution allow to a desired time resolution (e.g. seconds) ? Does choice of time resolution significantly depends on the physiology of the animal (e.g. time of re-action to stimuli, hence less than a second) or for most animal communication and animal behaviour is it enough above a second? 
 

Paul Bunker

17 December 2023 3:02pm

I am not an acoustics person but train and deploy canines in the field. Are you looking for something that records  sniff rate and patterns?  For GPS I just use a Garmin collar system Altha 100. There is a Conservation Canine group that might be worth asking your question in. 

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article

How to Choose a Biologger - Collaring Koalas with Matthew Stanton

Holly Cormack

7 December 2023 12:00pm

In the penultimate article in my series examining how people find biologging tech for their projects, I spoke with Matthew Stanton about developing custom biologging technology for studying koala behaviour.

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Lars Holst Hansen

12 December 2023 5:22pm

Very cool feature! I wonder if you had any issues with clock drift and offset on the various loggers, @M_Stanton. I am struggling a bit at the moment with soome audiologger in...
Matthew Stanton

13 December 2023 10:06pm

Hi Lars,Yes, the audio devices had a number of issues when it came to time recording.The clock on these devices was set via the microSD card. You would program the card with a...
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discussion

Query regarding Biologgers for Freshwater crabs

Abinesh A

16 November 2023 4:45am

I'm new to WildLabs, I guess I'm writing in a relevant area to get addressed with my query. I'm doing my doctoral research at Bharathiar University currently. I am planning to do...

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Rob Appleby

18 November 2023 10:37pm

My pleasure @Abinesh and if you have any more questions etc., don't hesitate to ask. This is a great community with plenty of smart cookies that can help and also me if I am able!

All the best for your research. 

Rob

Thomas Gray

1 December 2023 8:54pm

Star-Oddi in Iceland comes to mind, but I'm not 100% sure. 

Abinesh A

3 December 2023 2:43am

Thank you Thomas, you are absolutely right but when I Mailed them, I didn't get a response about the price , shipment and so on! Thus I arrived to find some loggers in India itself 

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discussion

Alternative trackers for study of grey parrots movement patterns

Ninying Benedicta

3 November 2023 7:31pm

Hi everyone, i pray this message reaches you well. Please I am looking for alternative ideas as to which other tracker to use on the African grey parrots to track their movement...

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Kyler Abernathy

1 December 2023 8:10pm

Hi Ninying,

One benefit of the Pinpoint tags is that they are user-rechargeable, something pretty much unheard of for satellite tags for decades!  If you can recover the tags, you might be able to achieve a larger samples size with fewer tags (less $$) by redeploying the recovered tags - without the costs of having the manufacturer refurbish them.

cheers,

Kyler

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discussion

Automatic and open-source radio-tracking

Jennifer Lisa Insupp

15 November 2023 10:03am

Hi all, hope you're doing well! I have a question regarding this article, attached above: Do you know anything about that or do you have informations if this was implented...

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Sarah Radford

23 November 2023 4:58pm

Hi @tutgut5 @Rob_Appleby  



their system has been used in a research project at the University of Marburg (LOEWE-Schwerpunkt  Natur 4.0), its also been used in combination with Infra-red videos of bat movements (BatRack). We cooperated with them in 2021 for a small telemetry study, it worked well for us, here is their homepage 

https://trackit.systems/team/

(although I'm not sure how up to date it is), if you have questions and would like some more info about their system there is an email address to contact them at. 







All the best,

Sarah

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event

Animove 2024

Adrien Pajot

17 November 2023 10:47am

Join the summer programme from 17 June until 28 June 2024 with leading researchers to expand your knowledge and to take the opportunity to form networks and friendships with academics and students from around the world.

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discussion

TWS2023 - get in touch

Tobias Petri

5 November 2023 8:13pm

Hi, I'll stick around at the TWS2023 Louisville with our friends from e-obs to do some live Firetail demos and discuss your ideas and requirements. Would be great to get in...

1 1
Tobias Petri

5 November 2023 9:04pm

I'm registered with the TWS2023 app, so feel free to nudge me there as well

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discussion

Project Update: Improving satellite ear tag transmitters for Polar Bears

Stephanie O'Donnell

6 October 2023 1:42pm

I was just delighted that WWF's Sybille Klenzendorf and Mistywest's Tony Jackson joining us to talk about the polar bear ear tag they've been working on for the past few years....

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Lars Holst Hansen

13 October 2023 10:57am

Hey Rob! I also missed this variety hour thinking it was the next day. I enjoyed the recording on youtube though!

Your thoughts on distributing the components to both sides of the ear is interesting. One thing to consider is heat dessipation, I believe. I believe it is important to consider how heat conducting the part going through the ear is. A few cables would perhaps be OK. Ruggedness should have a very high priority and the more compact the device is the better, I would think.

Interesting stuff you shared about the antenna!

Cheers,

Lars

 

Rob Appleby

20 October 2023 3:00pm

Cheers @Lars_Holst_Hansen , yes, the antenna foam spacer idea certainly helped us a bit. I completely agree though that ruggedness, especially on a polar bear (a bit different from a koala 'bear') is a top priority, so there's a lot to consider. 

 

Rob

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