Abstract
The use of animal-born sensors for location-based tracking and bio-logging in terrestrial systems has expanded dramatically in the past 10 years. This rapid expansion has generated new data on how animals interact with and respond to variation in their environment, resulting in important ecological, physiological and evolutionary insights. However, although understanding the finer details of animal locations and state also has important management relevance, applied studies are not prominent in the movement ecology literature. This is despite the long history of applied studies of animal movement and the urgent and growing need for evidence-based conservation guidance, especially in the challenging field of human-wildlife interactions. The goal of this review is to evaluate the realized contribution of tracking-based animal movement ecology to solving specific conservation problems and to identify barriers that may hinder expansion of that contribution. To do this, we (a) briefly review the history and technologies used in animal tracking and bio-logging, (b) use a series of literature searches to evaluate the frequency with which movement ecology studies are designed to solve specific conservation problems, and (c) use this information to identify challenges that limit the applied relevance of the field of movement ecology and to propose pathways to expand that applied relevance. Our literature review quantifies the limited extent to which research in the field of movement ecology is designed to solve specific conservation problems, but also the fact that such studies are slowly becoming more prevalent. We discuss how barriers that limit application of these principles are likely due to constraints imposed by the types of data used commonly in the field. For example, problems of scale mismatch, error compounding, and data paucity all create challenges that are especially pertinent in applied situations. Finding solutions to these problems will create new opportunity for movement ecologists to contribute to conservation science.
Highlights
The use of animal-born sensors for location-based tracking and bio-logging in terrestrial systems has expanded dramatically in the recent past (Kays et al, 2015)
Other categories of papers we considered were those that were Perspectives, Viewpoints, Frameworks, or “calls to arms” (“Calls”), those that described new tools for data collection or analysis (“Tool”), review papers (“Review”), and those that were not applicable to any of these categories (“NA,” includes editorials, corrections, or papers not about movement ecology)
Some manuscripts reviewed background and proposed, and sometimes even used, new or modified tools. These manuscripts reasonably could have been categorized as “Review,” “Descriptive,” or “Tools.” We were less stringent in assigning papers to these non-relevant categories and, it may not be appropriate to use our summaries of categorization of papers for goals other than those we present here
Summary
The use of animal-born sensors for location-based tracking and bio-logging in terrestrial systems has expanded dramatically in the recent past (Kays et al, 2015). This rapid expansion has resulted in important insights into ecology and physiology, especially in documenting how animals interact with and respond to variation in their environment. Integrating physiological data delivered by bio-logging together with habitat selection and movement information provides insight into how the environment constrains animal behavioral and demographic response to anthropogenic influences (Shepard et al, 2011; Mosser et al, 2014)
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