What’s a recent exciting advancement in the field?

Ask a Biologist Monday 7/19/22

Answers from Biologists:

• Focus on urban conservation and environmental justice.

• Cloning endangered species with preserved genetic material (ex: black footed ferret).

• Greater focus on traditional ecological knowledge.

• Accelerometer (ACC) data from transmitters to remotely quantify animal behavior.

• The push to pay technicians a living wage.

• STEAM! The blending of art and science. It’s beautiful.

• The focus on sci-comm and sci-art. Folks are realizing what powerful tools these are.

• Tiny solar powered satellite tags for birds to track migration remotely.

• We’ve started using LiDAR with our digital aerial surveys to measure flight heights of birds.

• Drone DNA collection from the blows of whales. It’s like a video game to predict it.

• Use of species range maps to prioritize land acquisition to promote biodiversity.

• Continuous time movement modeling to quantify movement.

• Stable isotope analysis of tissue and hair.

• MOTUS network expanding and Nano tags.

• Survey 123/Epicollect. Collecting data electronically saves time and you carry less.

• Smaller, stronger GPS tags.

• Underwater drones to survey for turtles.

• Combining AI and citizen science to improve wildlife identification in photos.

• Live camera feeds on bird nests.

• Advancements in acoustic surveys to study bats, birds, frogs/toads, and more!

• Using conservation dogs to do scent work on projects.

• Anti-poaching transmitters that can even sense when the animal is under stress.

• Using drones to plant trees.

• Artificial intelligence to track deforestation and water loss.

• Infrared imaging of animals.