Quantifying movement and demographic events of free‐ranging animals is fundamental to studying their ecology, evolution and conservation. Technological advances have led to an explosion in sensor‐based methods for remotely observing these phenomena. This transition to big data creates new challenges for data management, analysis and collaboration. We present the Movebank ecosystem of tools used by thousands of researchers to collect, manage, share, visualize, analyse and archive their animal tracking and other animal‐borne sensor data. Users add sensor data through file uploads or live data streams and further organize and complete quality control within the Movebank system. All data are harmonized to a data model and vocabulary. The public can discover, view and download data for which they have been given access to through the website, the Animal Tracker mobile app or by API. Advanced analysis tools are available through the EnvDATA System, the MoveApps platform and a variety of user‐developed applications. Data owners can share studies with select users or the public, with options for embargos, licenses and formal archiving in a data repository. Movebank is used by over 3,100 data owners globally, who manage over 6 billion animal location and sensor measurements across more than 6,500 studies, with thousands of active tags sending over 3 million new data records daily. These data underlie >700 published papers and reports. We present a case study demonstrating the use of Movebank to assess life‐history events and demography, and engage with citizen scientists to identify mortalities and causes of death for a migratory bird. A growing number of researchers, government agencies and conservation organizations use Movebank to manage research and conservation projects and to meet legislative requirements. The combination of historic and new data with collaboration tools enables broad comparative analyses and data acquisition and mapping efforts. Movebank offers an integrated system for real‐time monitoring of animals at a global scale and represents a digital museum of animal movement and behaviour. Resources and coordination across countries and organizations are needed to ensure that these data, including those that cannot be made public, remain accessible to future generations.
The Rapid Rise of Next-Generation Natural History
Many ecologists have lamented the demise of natural history and have attributed this decline to a misguided view that natural history is outdated and unscientific. Although there is a perception that the focus in ecology and conservation have shifted away from descriptive natural history research and training toward hypothetico-deductive research, we argue that natural history has entered a new phase that we call “next-generation natural history.” This renaissance of natural history is characterized by technological and statistical advances that aid in collecting detailed observations systematically over broad spatial and temporal extents. The technological advances that have increased exponentially in the last decade include electronic sensors such as camera-traps and acoustic recorders, aircraft- and satellite-based remote sensing, animal-borne biologgers, genetics and genomics methods, and community science programs. Advances in statistics and computation have aided in analyzing a growing quantity of observations to reveal patterns in nature. These robust next-generation natural history datasets have transformed the anecdotal perception of natural history observations into systematically collected observations that collectively constitute the foundation for hypothetico-deductive research and can be leveraged and applied to conservation and management. These advances are encouraging scientists to conduct and embrace detailed descriptions of nature that remain a critically important component of the scientific endeavor. Finally, these next-generation natural history observations are engaging scientists and non-scientists alike with new documentations of the wonders of nature. Thus, we celebrate next-generation natural history for encouraging people to experience nature directly.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2025755
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10299679
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution
- Volume:
- 9
- ISSN:
- 2296-701X
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Abstract -
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Abstract In the atmosphere,
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2021.698131
