Guidelines for the instrumentation of wild birds and mammals.

By Ruth M. Casper. 2009

170 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Attaching electronic devices to wild animals to acquire behavioural data is becoming increasingly more widespread. Birds and mammals are the most common taxa instrumented, with devices usually designed to store or transmit information relating to movement patterns. The electronic devices most often used are radiotransmitters, platform transmitter terminals, geolocation positioning system loggers and depth loggers. These are generally attached to animals externally using glues, collars or harnesses, or are implanted internally. It is recognized that negative effects associated with instrumentation cannot be completely avoided. This is because handling alone is likely to cause some stress to wild animals and also because some energetic cost is associated with carrying an extra load (Murray & Fuller 2000; Kenward 2001; Wilson & McMahon 2006). However, only a small proportion of publications include information on the impact of instrumentation on animals and the range of species used in these studies is limited, as are the parameters used to evaluate effects (Calvo & Furness 1992; Murray & Fuller 2000; Kenward 2001; Withey et al. 2001; Hawkins 2004). In particular, there is a lack of evidence with which to justify the broad application of hard and fast rules for instrumentation across avian or mammalian species which span widely different sizes and lifestyles. Furthermore, the reasons underlying adverse impacts of instrumentation are multifactorial and are related not only to the mass, size and shape of the device, but also, for example, to the sensitivity of the animal to disturbance, the capture method, the handling time, the attachment method, food availability and the length of deployment. Consequently, attaching devices to animals may result in combinations of immediate, delayed, short-term, long-term, direct and indirect effects. As such, the magnitude of the effects of instrumentation of animals is case-, speciesand physiological status-specific (Gaunt et al. 1997; Murray & Fuller 2000; Kenward 2001; Withey et al. 2001; Hawkins 2004). Researchers and animal ethics committees alike aim to minimize the negative effects of instrumentation. This not only considers the welfare of the animals, but also provides confidence that the data collected from instrumented animals are representative of the behaviour of the sampled population. However, a practical framework with which to achieve this is currently lacking and guidelines for instrumentation are often based on limited rules which do not account for the complexity and specificity of each situation. In particular, there appears in the literature a ‘5% (or 3%) rule’ which refers to a commonly accepted standard that the mass of an instrument should not exceed 5% (or 3%) of the body mass of an animal, and that any ratio less than 5% (or 3%) is acceptable (Gaunt et al. 1997; Wilson et al. 2002; Phillips et al. 2003; Gannon & Sikes 2007). The ‘5% rule’ is essentially arbitrary (Caccamise & Hedin 1985; Aldridge & Brigham 1988; Gessaman & Nagy 1988), while the ‘3% rule’ appears to have been extrapolated from a review of albatross and petrel studies correlating device loads with foraging trip durations and nest desertions (Phillips et al. 2003). It is clear that this approach is too simplistic. Differences in energy budgets between, and within, species preclude a single rule * Correspondence: R. Casper, Wildlife Advisory Panel, University of Tasmania Animal Ethics Committee, Private Bag 1, Hobart, Tasmania 7001, Australia. E-mail address: ruth.casper@utas.edu.au

Subfields: Animal Science and Zoology, Genetics, Small Animals

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/23b9ab18f8263838b5faf24e4bfdd8face48c147

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Citations in the corpus

The success of GPS collar deployments on mammals in Australia (2013, background): “grooming and sleeping), and to avoid interference with normal movement behaviour (Casper 2009).”
A flexible GPS tracking system for studying bird behaviour at multiple scales (2012, background): “The device carried by the bird should affect its behaviour as little as possible; this means that it would be light ( \ 3 % of body mass) and small with an optimized aerodynamic or hydrodynamic shape (Casper 2009).”
Best practice guidelines for cetacean tagging (2019, background): “Casper (2009) provided a valuable framework for minimising the negative effects of instrumenting wild birds and mammals, and Mulcahy (2011; 2013) reviewed asepsis and antibiotic usage associated with implanted electronic tags.”
A phylogenetically controlled meta‐analysis of biologging device effects on birds: Deleterious effects and a call for more standardized reporting of study data (2017, background): “In birds, there have been concerns as to the effects of biologging devices on the behaviour, and particularly the survival, of instrumented individuals for over a decade (Casper, 2009; Phillips et al., 2004; Sergio et al., 2015).”
Meta‐analysis of transmitter effects on avian behaviour and ecology (2010, methodology): “…topic are the previously mentioned reviews, the compilation of literature for this study (see Appendix S1), a recent article proposing guidelines for instrumentation (Casper 2009), Kenward’s (2001) radio tagging manual and the guidelines published by the Ornithological Council (Gaunt & Oring 1999).”
50 years of bat tracking: device attachment and future directions (2014, background): “Birds typically have transmitters glued to their dorsum or tail feathers, or secured with a backpack harness.”
Global positioning system and associated technologies in animal behaviour and ecological research (2010, background): “reproduction and survival, and can affect results (Murray & Fuller 2000; Wilson & McMahon 2006; Brooks et al. 2008; Casper 2009).”