Bio-logger development

Our work in bio-logger development is driven by a simple idea: if we want to understand behaviour in the wild, we need devices and analytical systems that are built around the biology of the question, not only the engineering of the sensor. We have worked across the full pipeline, from Daily Diary methods and behaviour annotation to logger optimisation, data transmission, and multi-sensor system design. This includes work on how to deploy tags more effectively for movement ecology, how to recover richer behavioural information from onboard sensors, and how to move large quantities of data reliably from free-ranging animals. Together, these projects have helped build the methodological foundation for extracting behaviour, performance and ecology from increasingly complex biologging systems.

Our current work is moving beyond recording individuals in isolation and toward capturing social interactions in motion. This includes development using WildFi and related multi-sensor platforms, e-obs GPS-IMU devices with social interaction firmware, and new approaches for fine-scale proximity detection and localisation. In the condor system, we are extending this into a long-term infrastructure built around IMU-GPS-proximity solar-powered devices, base stations, and multiple transmission pathways to recover social and movement data at scale.