Abstract
BackgroundImprovements in telemetry technology are allowing us to monitor animal movements with increasing accuracy, precision and frequency. The increased complexity of the data collections, however, demands additional software and programming skills to process, store and disseminate the datasets. Recent focus on data availability has also heightened the need for sustainable data management solutions to ensure data integrity and provide longer term access. In the last ten years, a number of online facilities have been developed for the archiving, processing and sharing of telemetry data. These facilities offer secure storage, multi-user support and analysis tools and are a step along the way to improving data access, long-term data preservation and science communication. While these software platforms promote data sharing, access to the majority of the data and to the software behind these systems remains restricted. In this paper, we present a comprehensive, highly accessible and fully transparent software facility for animal movement data.ResultsThe online system we developed (http://oztrack.org) offers a set of robust, up-to-date and accessible tools for managing, processing, visualising and analysing animal location data and linking these outputs with environmental datasets. As OzTrack uses exclusively free and open-source software, and the source code is available online, the system promotes open access not only to data but also to the tools and software underpinning the system.ConclusionsWe outline the capabilities and limitations of the infrastructure design and discuss the uptake of this platform by the Australasian biotelemetry community. We discuss whether an open approach to analysis tools and software encourages a more open approach to sharing data, information and knowledge. Finally, we discuss why a free and open approach enhances longer term sustainability and enables data storage facilities to evolve in parallel with the telemetry devices themselves.
Highlights
Improvements in telemetry technology are allowing us to monitor animal movements with increasing accuracy, precision and frequency
To help raise public awareness regarding the habits of wild estuarine crocodiles, OzTrack was used to archive the movements of six adult crocodiles fitted with GPS transmitters (Figure 4)
The project was open to the public to view the tracks in near real-time and apply a selection of analysis tools, and it was promoted via articles in the popular press and through public lectures
Summary
Improvements in telemetry technology are allowing us to monitor animal movements with increasing accuracy, precision and frequency. In the last ten years, a number of online facilities have been developed for the archiving, processing and sharing of telemetry data These facilities offer secure storage, multi-user support and analysis tools and are a step along the way to improving data access, long-term data preservation and science communication. The number of publications featuring the use of telemetric devices to provide fundamental insights into a species’ ecology has increased steadily over the past 30 years [1,2] Technological advancement during this time has improved positional accuracy and is allowing the collection of more frequent location fixes over longer time periods [3,4].
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