TY - JOUR
T1 - A scalable, satellite-transmitted data product for monitoring high-activity events in mobile aquatic animals
AU - Skubel, Rachel A.
AU - Wilson, Kenady
AU - Papastamatiou, Yannis P.
AU - Verkamp, Hannah J.
AU - Sulikowski, James A.
AU - Benetti, Daniel
AU - Hammerschlag, Neil
N1 - Funding Information:
For their assistance in captive trials, we thank the staff and student volunteers of the University of Miami Experimental Hatchery, particularly R. Hoenig, J. Florentino, and S. Mathur, the University of Miami Shark Research and Conservation Program, and the University of New England Department of Marine Science. Thank you to Austin Gallagher from Beneath the Waves Inc and his team, for deploying PSATS on sandbar sharks off Maryland. Thanks to Ga?tan Richard for the initial development of the activity algorithm and providing feedback on our adaptation for use on a PSAT. We acknowledge that this research was performed on ancestral Tequesta and Seminole territories.
Funding Information:
RS is supported by an NSERC PGS-D scholarship from the Government of Canada, a UM Fellowship from the University of Miami, and a Guy Harvey Scholarship from Florida Sea Grant and the Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation. This study was supported by a University of Miami Provost Grant.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, The Author(s).
PY - 2020/12
Y1 - 2020/12
N2 - A growing number of studies are using accelerometers to examine activity level patterns in aquatic animals. However, given the amount of data generated from accelerometers, most of these studies use loggers that archive acceleration data, thus requiring physical recovery of the loggers or acoustic transmission from within a receiver array to obtain the data. These limitations have restricted the duration of tracking (ranging from hours to days) and/or type of species studied (e.g., relatively sessile species or those returning to predictable areas). To address these logistical challenges, we present and test a satellite-transmitted metric for the remote monitoring of changes in activity, measured via a pop-off satellite archival tag (PSAT) with an integrated accelerometer. Along with depth, temperature, and irradiance for geolocation, the PSAT transmits activity data as a time-series (ATS) with a user-programmable resolution. ATS is a count of high-activity events, relative to overall activity/mobility during a summary period. An algorithm is used to identify the high-activity events from accelerometer data and reports the data as a count per time-series interval. Summary statistics describing the data used to identify high-activity events accompany the activity time-series. In this study, we first tested the ATS activity metric through simulating PSAT output from accelerometer data logger archives, comparing ATS to vectorial dynamic body acceleration. Next, we deployed PSATs with ATS under captive conditions with cobia (Rachycentron canadum). Lastly, we deployed seven pop-off satellite archival tags (PSATs) able to collect and transmit ATS in the wild on adult sandbar sharks (Carcharhinus plumbeus). In the captive trials, we identified both resting and non-resting behavior for species and used logistic regression to compare ATS values with observed activity levels. In captive cobia, ATS was a significant predictor of observed activity levels. For 30-day wild deployments on sandbar sharks, satellites received 57.4–73.2% of the transmitted activity data. Of these ATS datapoints, between 21.9 and 41.2% of records had a concurrent set of temperature, depth, and light measurements. These results suggest that ATS is a practical metric for remotely monitoring and transmitting relative high-activity data in large-bodied aquatic species with variable activity levels, under changing environmental conditions, and across broad spatiotemporal scales.
AB - A growing number of studies are using accelerometers to examine activity level patterns in aquatic animals. However, given the amount of data generated from accelerometers, most of these studies use loggers that archive acceleration data, thus requiring physical recovery of the loggers or acoustic transmission from within a receiver array to obtain the data. These limitations have restricted the duration of tracking (ranging from hours to days) and/or type of species studied (e.g., relatively sessile species or those returning to predictable areas). To address these logistical challenges, we present and test a satellite-transmitted metric for the remote monitoring of changes in activity, measured via a pop-off satellite archival tag (PSAT) with an integrated accelerometer. Along with depth, temperature, and irradiance for geolocation, the PSAT transmits activity data as a time-series (ATS) with a user-programmable resolution. ATS is a count of high-activity events, relative to overall activity/mobility during a summary period. An algorithm is used to identify the high-activity events from accelerometer data and reports the data as a count per time-series interval. Summary statistics describing the data used to identify high-activity events accompany the activity time-series. In this study, we first tested the ATS activity metric through simulating PSAT output from accelerometer data logger archives, comparing ATS to vectorial dynamic body acceleration. Next, we deployed PSATs with ATS under captive conditions with cobia (Rachycentron canadum). Lastly, we deployed seven pop-off satellite archival tags (PSATs) able to collect and transmit ATS in the wild on adult sandbar sharks (Carcharhinus plumbeus). In the captive trials, we identified both resting and non-resting behavior for species and used logistic regression to compare ATS values with observed activity levels. In captive cobia, ATS was a significant predictor of observed activity levels. For 30-day wild deployments on sandbar sharks, satellites received 57.4–73.2% of the transmitted activity data. Of these ATS datapoints, between 21.9 and 41.2% of records had a concurrent set of temperature, depth, and light measurements. These results suggest that ATS is a practical metric for remotely monitoring and transmitting relative high-activity data in large-bodied aquatic species with variable activity levels, under changing environmental conditions, and across broad spatiotemporal scales.
KW - Accelerometers
KW - Activity
KW - Activity levels
KW - Behavior
KW - Biologging
KW - Biotelemetry
KW - Satellite tags
KW - Sharks
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UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85096384117&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1186/s40317-020-00220-0
DO - 10.1186/s40317-020-00220-0
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85096384117
VL - 8
JO - Animal Biotelemetry
JF - Animal Biotelemetry
SN - 2050-3385
IS - 1
M1 - 34
ER -