History of wildlife tracking technology
[1] John James Audubon, a French American naturalist, ornithologist, and painter was the first person that attempted to paint and describe all the birds of America.
A problem with SIA occurs if birds undergo protein catabolism during migration and their isotopic information is subsequently lost as a result of blood-cell replacement.
The first acoustic telemetry equipment was developed for studying fish in 1956 by the U.S. Bureau of Commercial Fisheries and the Minneapolis-Honeywell Regulator Corporation.
Radio waves are highly absorbed by salt water, making them a poor choice for sending messages through the ocean.
Due to the fact that sound can travel more than 4 times faster in water than in air, this allows for near real-time listening over long distances with proper acoustic telemetry equipment.
Acoustic signals are the preferred communication tool for researchers who wish to track fish and wildlife in marine habitats in real time.
Of these electronics experts, William (Bill) W. Cochran, while an undergraduate student with the University of Illinois, had been working on the radio transmitting systems for some of the earliest satellites for the U. S. Army.
George Swenson,[16] principal investigator on a NASA-sponsored University of Illinois project to study Sputnik-era radio propagation through the Earth's ionosphere, had this to say about him: “... [Cochran] had been responsible for building and operating our field stations for a couple of years.
They had the idea that small radio transmitters, attached to rabbits, might allow them to track the animals into their burrows, and establish their activity patterns.
Success led to a suggestion from an ornithologist that perhaps birds could be tracked in flight.” According to Cochran (8/23/19), wildlife biologist Frank Bellrose wished to test the direction in which translocated mallard ducks flew when released into a new area.
Swenson[16] continued: “As [the duck] breathed quietly, the metal band periodically distorted and pulled the frequency, causing a varying beat note from the receiver.
When the bird was released into the air, its breathing was recorded on the chart, and in addition, a higher-frequency modulation representing its wing beats.
The biologists informed us that we'd made the first measurements of the relation between the wing beats and the breathing of a flying bird, thus answering a long-standing question,” as well as the direction in which the duck flew.
After leaving our program, he developed wildlife radio tracking to a high degree of effectiveness, founding the company that pioneered the business .
One of his first actions was to hire Cochran, still an undergraduate, to design a system to automatically concurrently monitor the movements of various animals in that study area.
Etienne Benson (2010) wrote, “They invited him to visit the group in Minnesota in the fall of 1961, and a few months later he moved to the Twin Cities to take charge of the Museum of Natural History’s bioelectronics laboratory.
That center not only produced many papers based on its own radio-tracking research, but it also developed new techniques, refined the tiny radio transmitters, attachment methods, and signal receivers and generally fostered the entire field through formal and informal collaboration with other biologists and engineers as well as spinning off businesses that commercially supplied the equipment.
Rather than spend time compiling and analyzing the numerous photographs, computer programs have been created to help researchers identify individuals and resighting events using existing photo-identification catalogues.
To activate the tag, a low-frequency radio signal is emitted by a scanning device that generates a close-range electromagnetic field.
First described in 1992, a geolocator is a device that periodically records ambient light level (solar irradiance) as a means of determining an organism's location.
Geolocators have been especially useful for tracking bird migration because there are small and lightweight ones that do not utilize satellite or radio telemetry for real-time monitoring.
When the organism is in a shaded environment, due to clouds, feathers, or foliage, a problem occurs since the geolocator does not record accurate light levels.
GPS technology enables individuals to observe relatively fine-scale movement or migratory patterns in a free-ranging wild animal using the Global Positioning System.
Organisms are fitted with a mobile phone tag that is programmed to attempt to send a text message back to the laboratory at regular intervals.
Data from PSAT's has been used to determine horizontal and vertical movement patterns, residence times, feeding bouts, and possible spawning areas.
This allowed for a simple bioconjugation to tag the organisms with the quantum dots, by taking advantage of the high affinity interaction between streptavidin and biotin.
D. magna individuals were successfully tracked with each having a unique quantum dot that fluoresced and emitted light of a specific wavelength that could be detected using cameras.
Better cameras are being developed that will improve the depth at which the quantum dot-tagged organisms can be observed and allow for studies to be conducted in natural environments.
In the future, technological advances may eventually lead to a transmitter capable of following the movements and behaviour of individuals throughout their life cycle.
