Forces experienced by instrumented animals depend on lifestyle
Type
PreprintAuthors
Wilson, Rory PRose, Kayleigh A
Gunner, Richard
Holton, Mark
Marks, Nikki J
Bennett, Nigel C
Bell, Stephen H.
Twining, Joshua P
Hesketh, Jamie
Duarte, Carlos M.
Bezodis, Neil
Scantlebury, D. Michael
KAUST Department
Biological and Environmental Sciences and Engineering (BESE) DivisionMarine Science Program
Red Sea Research Center (RSRC)
KAUST Grant Number
KAUST Sensor InitiativeDate
2020-08-21Permanent link to this record
http://hdl.handle.net/10754/667741Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
AbstractAnimal-attached devices have transformed our understanding of vertebrate ecology. However, to be acceptable, researchers must minimize tag-related harm. The long-standing recommendation that tag masses should not exceed 3% of the animal’s body mass ignores tag forces generated by movement. We used collar-attached accelerometers on four free-ranging carnivores, spanning two orders of magnitude in mass, to reveal that during movement, forces exerted by ‘3%’ tags were generally equivalent to 4-19% of the animals’ masses, with a record of 54% in a hunting cheetah. Controlled studies on domestic dogs revealed how the tag forces are dictated by animal gait and speed but appear largely invariant of body mass. This fundamentally changes how acceptable tag mass limits should be determined, requiring cognizance of animal athleticism.One Sentence SummaryThere can be no universal rule for collar-tag masses as a percentage of carrier mass since tag forces depend on lifestyle.Citation
Wilson, R. P., Rose, K. A., Gunner, R., Holton, M., Marks, N. J., Bennett, N. C., … Scantlebury, D. M. (2020). Forces experienced by instrumented animals depend on lifestyle. doi:10.1101/2020.08.20.258756Sponsors
We gratefully acknowledge the access provided by the National Trust and Forest Service NI. 35 We are also grateful to the RSPCA’s Llys Nini Wildlife Centre in Penllergaer, Wales, and to Judy Corbett and Peter Welford at Gwydir Castle in Llanrwst, Wales, for allowing us to work on their property with their dogs. We thank Derek van Heerden and the staff at Harnas Wildlife Foundation in Namibia for their kindness and supporting our work. We thank SANParks and the Department of Wildlife and National Parks, Botswana for allowing our research in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park (Permit Number SCAM 1550). We are grateful to Angela Bruns, Sam Ferreira 40 and Danny Govender and Pauli Viljoun for facilitating the research and to the many field staff and volunteers that conducted the fieldwork including Wayne Oppel, Corera Links, Martin van Rooyen and Mads Frost Bertelsen. We are grateful to Fraser Menzies and all the field staff at the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs, DARD. We are also grateful to the Vincent wildlife trust for supporting this research.Funding: This research also contributes to the CAASE project funded by King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) under the KAUST Sensor Initiative. This work acknowledges support from the Royal Society/Wolfson Lab refurbishment scheme (RPW). We are grateful for funding from Department of Learning and the Challenge Funding, and access provided by the National Trust and Forest Service NI. The cheetah research was supported by the Royal Society (2009/R3 JP090604) and Natural Environment Research Council (NE/I002030/1) (DMS). The lion work was supported by a Department for Economy Global Challenges Research Fund (DMS) with ethics 50 approval from Queen’s University Belfast (QUB-BS-AREC-18-006), Pretoria University (NAS061-19) and South (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.08.20.258756; this version posted August 21, 2020. The copyright holder for this preprint African National Parks. The badger work was funded by and the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD) Northern Ireland (currently the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs) through various studentships (DMS, NJM). The Pine marten work was funded by a Department for the Economy studentship to JPT (DMS, NJM); Author contributions: RPW conceived the work and wrote the manuscript with KAR and DMS. RG, SHB, NM, JPT, J.H and DMS collected data, which was analyzed by RPW, KAR, RG and DMS using software developed by MH. All authors provided valuable input to the writing and primary analysis.