discussion / Biologging  / 31 October 2016

Pit-tag automatic detector for very small animals

Dear all

very small animals (eg < 1g) cannot be equipped with VHF or GPS system to track their movements. One way is the use of passive transmitter (PIT-Tag) as emettor (implanted of glued) and detector. But the main issue is the detection distance: you will have to follow the equipped animals...or contraint their movements so that they will go through a tube antenna...A promizing solution could be the use of "cord antenna" i.e. antenna of several meter long, positionned on the floor, and which detect the animal which cross it. I would be very grateful if you could share experience on this topic, i.e. any solution to track these tiny animals...and eventually you current use of cord antenna in field conditions

Many thanks

Claude




Hi Claude,

What sort of an environment will you be doing your research in, if you don't mind recapturing them again you could try using micro coded wire tags? 

Hopefully that might be of some help to you and all the best with it.

 

Matt

Hi, you should explore (harmonic radar, Schottky diode 917 y 1834 MHz), the bad things it's that you can't get and ID and the receiver that uses two antennas it's really expensive (U$.7000) or use a radar system with satellite dish that would be more expensive.

Hi Claude,

If you are looking into cord antennas, the attached paper might be of interest (the authors are all from CNRS, which might be easier for collaborations).  A difference would be that you might need a faster sampling rate (since penguins are much slower than small mammals and take more time to cross the array of antennas).

Do keep us updated on your project. 

Yvan

gendner_et_al_2005_a_new_application_for_transponders_in_studying_penguins.pdf