Methods

Defining biologging

The scientific literature has yet to arrive on consensus definitions for biologging and related terms, such as biotelemetry, tagging, and tracking. Rutz and Hays (Rutz and Hays 2009) defined biologging as “the use of miniaturized animal-attached tags for logging and/or relaying of data about an animal’s movements, behaviour, physiology and/or environment” and Cooke et al. (Cooke et al. 2004) defined biotelemetry as “remote measurement of physiological, behavioural, or energetic data”. These and other definitions share the following two characteristics:

  • An electronic device is attached to an animal, externally or internally.

  • The device uses sensors and memory to record observations (e.g. GPS and accelerometers) or produces a signal that may be recorded by other sensors (e.g. acoustic telemetry and Argos satellites).

    • Hybrid devices may do both, either separately (e.g. a tag that transmits to Argos but also records depth from a pressure sensor, which may be downloaded after recovering the device) or simultaneously (e.g. a tag that records location using a GPS sensor, then transmits that location to Argos).

Further complicating matters, biologging may be used in many research contexts. Much of the biologger literature involves deployments on unrestrained, undomesticated animals for the purposes of addressing questions in ecology and conservation. But agricultural research also uses biologging devices to assess animal welfare and resource use (domesticated animals) and biomedical research uses animal-borne heart rate sensors in lab experiments (restrained).

The focus of this review is:

  1. Biologging devices that use sensors (as opposed to acoustic or radio transmitters)
  2. Deployed on unrestrained, undomesticated animals

The choice to exclude transmitters was based on the properties of the data collected. Data from sensor-based biologgers can reasonably be considered self-contained, whereas data from transmitters depend equally on the receiver network. This external dependency complicates the assessment of open data sharing, the primary goal of this review. We make an exception for one type of transmitter, Argos tags, because the Argos system provides data to researchers with properties more similar to sensor-based biologgers.

Assessing open data practices

At least two reviewers will score each paper. We’ll conduct two passes for our review: a broad pass that collects high-level information about all the papers returned in our query, and a fine-scale pass that will do a deep dive into data sharing practices and conservation claims.

Broad pass

Instructions for the broad pass.

Before you begin

  1. Make a copy of review_assignments_v0.2.1_v, name it “review_<your initials>” and leave it in the “Systematic review” folder.
  2. Filter the assigned_to column to your initials.
  3. If you started reviewing papers using earlier versions of this rubric, those papers are still assigned to you. You’ll need to copy your efforts over from v0.1 (4-sheet version) or v0.2.0 (single-sheet version before reassigning papers on 2023-11-05).

During your review

For each of your assigned papers, fill out columns D:O following the directions in the table below.

Column Valid values Instructions
manuscript_type [SRMPDU] Describe the type of paper. (S)tudy i.e. new research, (R)eview, (M)ethod, (P)erspective (or opinion, commentary, etc), (D)ata i.e. a data release paper, or (U)nrelated.
novel_biologging [YN] Did the paper present newly collected biologging data? Reanalyses of existing data should be marked N, unless newly collected biologging data were also collected.
biologging_context [WCD] If the paper presented novel biologging data, in what context was it collected? (W)ild, (C)aptive, or (D)omesticated. There will be some edge cases, e.g., semi-domesticated herded animals and experimentally relocated wild animals; use your best judgement. If there is a Movebank study, you can look for a classification in the manipulation-type in the reference data.
external_data [YN] Did the paper incorporate non-biologging data collected independently of the present study? E.g., satellite remote sensing or a phylogenetic tree. The purpose of this variable is to assess asymmetrical data sharing, so Y means this is a biologging paper that relied on shared non-biologging data. As a heuristic, limit “data” for these purposes would to products that don’t fit into papers themselves. E.g., numbers in a table don’t count, but a raster of land cover does.
device_cat [LIE]

What types of sensors were used? Following (Williams et al. 2019), choose one or more of these three categories:

  • Location: GPS, Argos, geolocation (using light and/or temperature), depth, altitude

  • Intrinsic: accelerometer, magnetometer, gyroscope, heart rate, Hall sensor, stomach temperature, neurological sensors, Pitot tubes, speed sensors (e.g., paddle wheels), internal body temperature (other than stomach)

  • Environment: ambient temperature, video, audio, salinity, fluorescence, proximity sensors (to other tagged animals), light

So a GPS tag would be L, GPS/accelerometer would be LI, GPS/accelerometer/temperature would be LIE, and a camera-only tag would be E.
genus Genus of the tagged animals. See more_species if multiple species were tagged.
species Species of the tagged animals. See more_species if multiple species were tagged.
habitat [AMT] Is the habitat of the species specified by genus and species (A)quatic, (M)arine, or (T)errestrial? A whale would be M, freshwater fish A, and an elk T. For flying animals, choose the habitat the animal is most associated with, like M for an albatross, T for a vulture, and A for an anhinga.
more_species [YN] Use this variable to indicate if more than one species was tracked. If so, add genus, species, and habitat information to the additional_taxa sheet.
biologging_avail [YN] Is there a data availability statement specifically for the biologging data? Any text specifically indicating how to find the data counts, including a DOI for a data repository entry, a Movebank project ID, or “available upon request”. If there is a data availability statement but it doesn’t address the biologging data, then this is a N.
conserv* [YN] Does the text “conserv*” appear in the paper, referring to conservation? E.g. “wildlife management and conservation” would count, but “a conservative measure of distance travelled” would not. This will be used to sample papers for assessing conservation claims with the fine-scale rubric.
note For your personal use. Questions or things you want to come back to later. Won’t be used in the analysis.

Fine-scale pass

Work in progress

Statistical analysis

Work in progress

References

Cooke, Steven J., Scott G. Hinch, Martin Wikelski, Russel D. Andrews, Louise J. Kuchel, Thomas G. Wolcott, and Patrick J. Butler. 2004. “Biotelemetry: A Mechanistic Approach to Ecology.” Trends in Ecology & Evolution 19 (6): 334–43. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2004.04.003.
Rutz, Christian, and Graeme C. Hays. 2009. “New Frontiers in Biologging Science.” Biology Letters 5 (3): 289–92. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2009.0089.
Williams, Hannah J., Lucy A. Taylor, Simon Benhamou, Allert I. Bijleveld, Thomas A. Clay, Sophie Grissac, Urška Demšar, et al. 2019. “Optimizing the Use of Biologgers for Movement Ecology Research.” Edited by Jean-Michel Gaillard. Journal of Animal Ecology 89 (1): 186–206. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.13094.