Finding a clear signal: a systematic review of desert radio telemetry research
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Biodiversity, Conservation Biology, Ecology, Zoology
- Keywords
- systematic review, desert, radio telemetry, radio tracking, wildlife, endangered species
- Copyright
- © 2017 Noble et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2017. Finding a clear signal: a systematic review of desert radio telemetry research. PeerJ Preprints 5:e2922v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.2922v1
Abstract
Radio telemetry is a common tool to monitor animals in many ecosystems. Radio telemetry, or radio tracking, typically uses a tag or collar with a radio transmitter attached to an animal that is monitored by researchers with a receiver. This technique is used for research in many disciplines such as wildlife ecology or conservation biology. Within desert ecosystems, this approach has been used since the 1960s in many different research capacities. Many desert species exist at low density and can range widely within a region due to scarce resources, which can make radio telemetry a useful method to use in these environments. Here, we examined the peer-reviewed literature to assess how radio telemetry is used in deserts. Using the Web of Science with additional search validation on Google Scholar to formally summarize this research, we found 97 studies that fit our criteria. Most primary studies used radio telemetry to examine individual behavior and/or habitat use. The majority of published studies were done in the United States. The most common classes of animal studied were mammals (29.9 % large mammals and 25.8 % small mammals). Most species studied were classified as ‘least concern’ for risk status. Vhf radio telemetry devices predominated the technology selected (80.4 %) whilst GPS devices were used in 19.6 % of studies. Radio telemetry devices are an effective tool to survey individual animals and animal populations in harsh desert environments. However, future research can be improved using these tools to improve reproducibility encourage data reuse and comparison between studies. We encourage authors using radio telemetry to publish their data and include details of their study area and tracking methods to accomplish these goals.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.
Supplemental Information
Target Taxa
Figure showing the frequency of each type of target taxa for the 97 reviewed studies.
IUCN Risk Status
Figure showing the frequency of the assessed IUCN risk status of the target species for the 97 reviewed studies.
Number of hypotheses examined
Frequency bar chart of the number of hypotheses examined for the 97 studies.
Duration of Study
Frequency histogram for the duration of study by the hypothesis tested.
Papers included in this review
Table of papers included in this systematic review.
Classification of Ecological Purpose
A table explaining how the ecological purposes were classifed.
Dataset for this systematic review
Dataset of extracted data for this systematic review.