Wildlife tracking technologies have already massively advanced our understanding of the natural world, from uncovering previously mysterious migration patterns and key movement corridors to demonstrating the impacts of anthropogenic pressures and climate change. Recent advances in the development of technologies for collecting and transmitting biologging data have unlocked the potential for fine-scale data collection at a near-global scale, which when integrated with remotely sensed environmental data offers an unprecedented biological lens into ecosystem health and environmental change (Jetz et al. 2022).
New technologies on the horizon include small satellites like CubeSats, which are being investigated by NASA, the ICARUS Initiative's satellite system, and a variety of other ventures aiming to improve the coverage, accuracy, and capacity of wildlife tracking data collection. Combined with the increased availability of high-resolution environmental data and analytical developments in movement modeling, these advancements are empowering movement ecologists to ask previously unanswerable or unimaginable questions. It’s clear that this discipline sits at the precipice of major breakthroughs that could revolutionize our understanding of animal movement and the natural world.
In this interview between Rob Appleby and Ellie Warren, we discuss the importance of DIY, recycling, and sharing tools in order to make our community more sustainable.
14 June 2023
Come work with us! WILDLABS and Fauna & Flora are seeking an intern to help develop the movement ecology content on the Inventory - our wiki-inspired database of conservation technology. Accepting applications until...
6 June 2023
The Innovation in Practice edition of Methods in Ecology and Evolution is still seeking proposals about conservation technology
6 March 2023
The Zoological Society of London, with the support of WILDLABS and the UK Space Agency, are proud to publish this new guide to satellite technologies for tracking wildlife.
17 February 2023
Researchers and conservationists are embarking on a bold initiative to save the world's most trafficked wild mammal — the pangolin
16 February 2023
As part of the AniMove eLearning programme, you are now able to stream 2022 Animal movement & remote sensing course lectures opensource.
10 February 2023
Are you stuck on an AI or ML challenge in your conservation work? Apply now for the chance to receive tailored expert advice from data scientists! Applications due 27th January 2023
18 January 2023
Discover how humans are working with animals – from dragonflies and ospreys to hedgehogs and jaguars – to improve our understanding of wildlife behaviour and numbers around the world, and how best to protect them.
16 January 2023
WILDLABS and Fauna & Flora International are seeking an early career Vietnamese conservationist for 12-month paid internship position to grow and support the Southeast Asia regional community in our global...
11 January 2023
The University of Alaska Fairbanks is seeking a research Post Doctoral Fellow to work in collaboration with the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The position will focus on using Machine...
7 December 2022
First known baited underwater video match of an individual white shark, based on facial scars and other unique features White shark undertakes 1,100-mile (1800-km) transboundary swim from South Africa to Mozambique
25 October 2022
Careers
This position (at California State University, Long Beach) provides data management & analysis support to Shark Lab research operations including shark tagging, active tracking, receiver data, AUV & UAV data...
24 October 2022
June 2024
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May 2023
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Earth Species Project - Senior AI Research Scientist
15 July 2022 6:40pm
Conservation Data Coordinator
15 July 2022 11:02am
New Conservation Tech Directory update
27 June 2022 4:45pm
Elephant Collar
11 June 2022 3:53pm
25 June 2022 3:26pm
its nylon rubber material
WILDLABS Virtual Meetup: Future Questions & Tools in Movement Ecology (Recording)
22 June 2022 10:24pm
On the lookout for CAD/Microcontroller work!
17 June 2022 5:04pm
Virtual Meetup Discussion: Future Questions & Tools in Movement Ecology
7 June 2022 9:38pm
11 June 2022 4:42pm
We've actually been looking into NFC to automatically provision field devices to set/read/store metadata. We're staring down the barrel of a large deployment and metadata is one of the issues that we think really needs automation. We're thinking of having a dedicated device to write and read the tags that would go on the devices as stickers and automagically sync the metadata with the database. An added bonus would be that most recently modern phones support NFC protocols like NTAG or MiFare Classic. That would mean that they could also be both read and written with the GPS coordinates, timestamp, etc as they're deployed in the field. It's still under discussion with the many other things that need to be implemented, though. I do think it's interesting that what we're seeing in a lot of conservation technology applications is not just a need for new technology but also the less exciting but more practical need for things that improve productivity like automating metadata management.
12 June 2022 1:08am
Using NFC makes a lot of sense too. I'm just on an older lower-end device that doesn't support it, which is why it didn't pop immediately to mind. Would be interesting to see what the adoption rate for NFC-capable phones is across countries though I'd imagine some phone manufacturer or something already has that data.
12 June 2022 2:29am
A bit opposite of what you're looking for but according to this, the share of non-NFC enabled phones was 10% in 2020. They don't state their source unless you pay, but I suspect that's in terms of total phone models, not total phones in use. So it's highly likely that phones with no NFC in use is much higher than that.
Ocean Tracking Network - Telemetry Data Study Hall
8 June 2022 6:48pm
Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Ungulate Ecology Lab
8 June 2022 1:32pm
Heart rate detected with accelerometers
1 June 2022 11:41pm
2 June 2022 8:08am
Hi Max,
Well firstly, welcome! This is a great intro - I'm looking forward to having a poke around these links and reading more about your work. Sounds like you might well be interested in the topic of our meetup next week - we'll be talking about the future of biologging and biologging, the emerging tech and questions we should be paying attention to. I can't remember if I've seen your name pop up in our last few events, but hopefully will see you there! More below if you're interested!
Steph
WILDLABS Virtual Meetup: Data Sharing and Archiving in Movement Ecology (Recording)
31 May 2022 11:03pm
Argos satellite tag open-source grant
14 August 2020 5:43pm
26 August 2020 4:07pm
The official announcement went out yesterday - https://mailchi.mp/1e130f609ed2/august2020?e=[UNIQID]
31 May 2022 3:56pm
We are still running this grant program albeit with subtle changes to improve the hardware/service agreement (in your favor).
If you want to build your own tag, have a passion for open-source, and at minimum have a North American ship-to address, reach out.
New paper: A practical approach with drones, smartphones, and tracking tags for potential real-time animal tracking
29 May 2022 1:15pm
WILDLABS Virtual Meetup: Future Questions & Tools in Movement Ecology
24 May 2022 10:10pm
WILDLABS Virtual Meetup: Data Analysis in Movement Ecology (Recording)
12 May 2022 10:03pm
WILDLABS Virtual Meetup: Data Sharing & Archiving in Movement Ecology
10 May 2022 11:26pm
WILDLABS Virtual Meetup: Data Collection in Movement Ecology (recording)
9 May 2022 3:51pm
WILDLABS Virtual Meetups Season Four: Tracking Progress
29 April 2022 9:57am
WILDLABS Virtual Meetup: Data Analysis in Movement Ecology
26 April 2022 12:00am
Firetail - visualization of tracks and sensor data
9 April 2022 5:12pm
12 April 2022 9:17am
Hello!
Yes, Firetail is primarilly meant for visualisation of tracking and sensor data (from accelerometers, gyroscopes, magnetometers etc).
A good place to get an introduction to the possibilities is the company's youtube page:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-3sXPVomr4mafv16SAOpiA/videos
Best regards,
Lars
22 April 2022 7:21am
Hi Lars,
thanks a lot for the recommendation and this great use case!
Our team at Firetail is very enthusiastic about pushing the boundaries for the visualization and annotation of large datasets and it is great to see our work towards a Vectronic acceleration workflow was successul.
If there are researchers on wildlabs that are interested in the process, we should compile a short step-by-step tutorial. This would help to get started with Vectronic acc visuals/annotation.
In general: Firetail is not limited to specific tags vendors. We aim to support a complete set of GPS/Acceleration/Sensor data... if you experience problems with your data sets, don't hesitate to contact us!
Tobias
22 April 2022 7:47am
Hi Truphena,
Firetail is designed with animal telemetry in mind. But, you could import any kind of data that features latitute, longitude and some kind of ID (plus whatever sensors you have) like ship vessels, air traffic and so on. It is mostly a matter of getting the formats straight, but our support can help you with that.
Some adaptions may be required, but Firetail has grown with the community use cases from day one, we do not intend to change this any time soon.
What kind of data are you working on?
A good place to start may be the manual or, as Lars mentionend, our video tutorials (I linked the beginner's tutorial). You can also contact our support for specific questions.
Tobias
WILDLABS Virtual Meetup: Data Collection in Movement Ecology
19 April 2022 12:00am
News: The Latest in Conservation Tech
10 March 2022 12:00am
Opportunities: PhD Graduate Assistantship
8 March 2022 12:00am
Dog GPS Loggers
21 December 2021 8:06pm
19 February 2022 11:20pm
@alsnothome the SnapperGPS looks sooooooo SWEET!. I am super-duper keen to try it out!
20 February 2022 6:59am
20 February 2022 10:50am
I'm co-developing SnapperGPS as part of my PhD. We're currently working on getting a release on GroupGets. Everything is moving a little slowly because of the chip shortage, though.
Happy to hear there's interest!
Paper suggestions for learning movement tracking technology development
9 February 2022 7:16pm
Tech Tutors: How do I get started with OpenCollar Edge Trackers?
3 November 2021 11:35am
Technical Difficulties: The Death of Giants
3 November 2021 12:00am
Opportunity: PhD or Postdoctoral Research Fellowships - Chinstrap penguin biologging
1 November 2021 12:00am
Technical Difficulties: Can You Hear Me Now?
19 October 2021 12:00am
The need for speed in Sea Turtle Telemetry
15 October 2021 12:00am
16 June 2022 11:33pm
Great work @kangs and Technology For Wildlife Africa! Can I ask, what's the collar material made out of?
Cheers,
Rob