Animal ecology meets GPS-based radiotelemetry: a perfect storm of opportunities and challenges

摘要

Global positioning system (GPS) telemetry technology allows us to monitor and to map the detailsof animal movement, securing vast quantities of such data even for highly cryptic organisms. Weenvision an exciting synergy between animal ecology and GPS-based radiotelemetry, as for otherexamples of new technologies stimulating rapid conceptual advances, where research opportunitieshave been paralleled by technical and analytical challenges. Animal positions provide the elementalunit of movement paths and show where individuals interact with the ecosystems around them. Wediscuss how knowing where animals go can help scientists in their search for a mechanistic under-standing of key concepts of animal ecology, including resource use, home range and dispersal, andpopulation dynamics. It is probable that in the not-so-distant future, intense sampling of move-ments coupled with detailed information on habitat features at a variety of scales will allow us torepresent an animal's cognitive map of its environment, and the intimate relationship betweenbehaviour and fitness. An extended use of these data over long periods of time and over large spatialscales can provide robust inferences for complex, multi-factorial phenomena, such as meta-analysesof the effects of climate change on animal behaviour and distribution.