Zhejiang University: A new integrated technology for animal tracking

The movement of animals not only affects individual survival and shapes the spatial distribution of species, but also promotes the dispersal of individuals between different subpopulations, and can promote gene flow through pollination and seed dispersal, maintaining biodiversity
.
In recent years, positioning methods based on the Global Positioning System (GPS) have developed rapidly
.
In practice, researchers often need to weigh the weight of the tracker, the accuracy and continuity of the data, and the cost of
the entire data acquisition system.
These factors also limit the application of
GPS positioning in small animals.

This study proposes a new integrated technology for tracking small and medium-sized animals, the core of which is to use drones to carry a "biological ubiquitous network" gateway (i.
e.
, receiver) to recover positioning data from lightweight GPS trackers (3.
7g) (Figure 1).

In order to verify the performance and feasibility of the system, a fixed test and field operation test
were carried out in the land bridge island system of Qiandao Lake.
The fixed test results show that the success rate of positioning of the system is above 97%, the average positioning accuracy is 10.
4-23.
3 meters, the average accuracy is 7.
3-21.
6 meters, and it can be 600-1000 6-72 records
per second at a distance of meters.
In the field operation test, 6 jays Garrulus glandarius were used as the tracking object, and the success rate of the test positioning was above 98%, and the results showed that the range of jay activity during the tracking period was 2 Within
kilometers.
The combination of drones and receivers greatly reduces the workload in the field, and can overcome landscape obstacles, signal shielding problems, has the potential to be combined with other monitoring systems, and can also be promoted for large animals or migratory species
with more fixed migration paths.
This ensemble method has broad application prospects
in population ecology, ensemble population biology, community ecology, conservation biology and other related fields.

Figure: (a) Schematic diagram
of how the system works.
1) GPS tracker is charged by solar energy; 2-4) Smartphones/PCs, receivers and trackers communicate with each other via Bluetooth; 5) The receiver transmits data to the cloud through 2G; 6) Query and download data
from the cloud.
(b) Jay Garrulus glandarius
with GPS tracker fixed.
(c) The receiver is fixed between
the landing gear of the drone.

The above results have been published in the internationally renowned ecology journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution, with Jin Tinghao, a doctoral student in the research group, as the first author, Professor Ding Ping as the corresponding author, and the School of Life Sciences of Zhejiang University as the first author
of the paper.

Original link: https://doi.
org/10.
1111/2041-210X.
14055