Abstract
Movement behaviors are central to ecology and conservation. Movement sensing technologies can monitor behaviors that are otherwise difficult to observe under field conditions and may enhance the ability to quantify behaviors at the population scale. We monitored steelhead trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) spawning behaviors in a seminatural enclosure using accelerometer telemetry tags while simultaneously observing behaviors with underwater cameras. Behavioral assignments from visual observations were compared to acceleration histories to develop assignment criteria for acceleration data, including for a key behavior (oviposition). Behavioral events independently classified using acceleration data prior to reviewing video were compared to video scoring and 97% of holding behaviors, 93% of digging behaviors, and 86% of oviposition/covering behaviors were correctly assigned using acceleration data alone. We applied the method to at‐liberty steelhead in spawning tributaries. Acceleration records revealed putative spawning and oviposition in at‐liberty female steelhead, and time budgets for at‐liberty steelhead were similar to those monitored within enclosures. The use of similar movement sensing tags and classification approaches offers a method for monitoring movement behavior, activity budgets, and habitat use in a broad array of aquatic and terrestrial taxa, and may be especially useful when behaviors are cryptic.
Highlights
Movement behaviors of animals are linked to individual fitness at multiple scales
Improvements in optics (Graham, Jones, & Reid, 2004), acoustic cameras (Martignac, Daroux, Bagliniere, Ombredane, & Guillard, 2015; Mueller, Brown, Hop, & Moulton, 2006), and the use of pas‐ sive integrated transponder (PIT) tag (Roussel, Haro, & Cunjak, 2000) and accelerometer tag technology have enhanced the capacity for tracking movements and behaviors (Broell, Taylor, Litvak, Bezanson, & Taggart, 2016; Moser, Corbett, Burke, & Langness, 2018; Thiem et al, 2015; Watanabe, Wei, Du, Li, & Miyazaki, 2013)
And surgically implanted accelerometer telemetry tag studies have been limited to studies of large‐bodied species (Moser et al, 2018; Whitney, Papastamatiou, Holland, & Lowe, 2007) capable of bearing larger tags
Summary
Movement behaviors of animals are linked to individual fitness at multiple scales. understanding movement behavior is critical to understanding factors affecting species of ecological and management interest. Determining the relationship between specific behaviors and acceleration time series data is a key step in implementing accelerometer tag technology in field studies of at‐liberty animals. Spawning behaviors strongly affect lifetime fitness in anadromous salmonids because many species are semelparous or nearly so. The development of acceleration telemetry (i.e., accelerometers transmitting data in real time) provides the op‐ portunity to quantify behavior without tag recovery. The goal of this research was to quantify behaviors in spawn‐ ing adult steelhead using acceleration data transmitted from tagged fish spawning in the wild after associating patterns of ac‐ celeration to specific behaviors in a controlled spawning enclo‐ sure (Figure 1). Our goal for the at‐liberty steelhead was to classify behaviors using the criteria developed in the enclosures, focusing on female oviposition events
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