A new antenna was installed in Newport on Friday, working with existing technology to allow researchers to track the paths of migratory birds and insects.
The antenna was installed on the roof of Hatfield Marine Science Center's Gladys Valley Marine Research Building. The installation was led by Vanessa Laverty of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency's regional shorebird biologist for Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Hawaii.
It's called the Motus Wildlife Tracking System. (Motus is a Latin word meaning movement or action.) It is a collaborative global network that uses automatic radio telemetry to track small flying creatures (birds, bats, insects).
According to the website — motus.org — this tracking system has four unique features.
• Lightweight tracking devices can be safely attached to the smallest birds, bats, and large insects.
• Enables high-resolution tracking in time and space.
• Infrastructure, technology, and data are affordable and accessible, increasing equity among researchers.and
• Individual contributions are further amplified through a diverse and networked community of people working together towards common science and conservation goals.
Motus uses digitally coded radio tags that emit a signal on a single frequency and can be detected at a range of 10 to 12 miles by an open source network of receiving stations, like the one installed in Newport last week. It is. This system allows us to track hundreds of species and thousands of animals simultaneously. Participants in the network set up receivers and deploy registered tags for their own purposes. In doing so, we scale up and amplify the impact of everyone's work by leveraging the time and effort of others through coordinated collaboration.
“There are a lot of projects, and they range from birds to bats to insects. Anyone who attaches a motus tag has access to all the towers we put up,” Laverty said in Hatfield last Friday. said. “So when we install these receiving stations, we are contributing to their project.”
All Motus are open to the public. “All the data is shareable and has been in use on the East Coast for quite some time,” she said. “They're building more towers, so they're getting very detailed data on movement and tracking.”
By tracking the movements of birds and insects, researchers can learn what routes they prefer, where their foraging sites are, or if something has changed and they no longer go where they used to go. You can also check it. “And if you want a very detailed scale, like with some songbirds, if they're on breeding grounds, where they're breeding, where they're foraging, what their home ranges are, all kinds of things. information,” Laverty said.
“There's a project we're working on with Redknots. They're shorebirds, and they're wearing motus tags in Mexico,” Laverty said. “Then they migrate to Alaska to breed, so they're marked along the way so we can tell how long they're there. How long they're in the estuary. We're seeing climate change and they're moving into breeding grounds. If they haven't, we know they're staying close. There are all kinds of questions that we can answer.”
Laverty said Motus was a great collaboration. “This has opened up a lot of doors for us to partner with different agencies and partner on these types of projects. More towers are being built rapidly. Birds in the Arctic Once you catch them and band them, they come back to the exact same nest box. Just by erecting a tower, you can identify new areas that these birds didn't know they were going to.”
