Category: Practical Tools

Practical Tools

The future of natural history specimen 3D digitization is here with COPIS

Post provided by Jeremy D. Pustilnik and Genevieve S. Rios Natural history museums around the world collectively hold over one billion specimens in their collections, from animal skins and fossils to pressed plants, minerals, and cultural heritage artifacts. Only a small fraction of these objects is ever placed on public display, while most remain in collection cabinets where they are studied by scientists, but rarely … Continue reading The future of natural history specimen 3D digitization is here with COPIS

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Ecology, Practical Tools

What a national marine dataset taught us about the power of quality control and collaboration

Post provided by Brooke Bond (Gibbons) Ecologists often dream about big datasets—Combining observations from multiple studies across space and time could reveal patterns that would otherwise be impossible to detect. But anyone who has tried to merge datasets from different sources knows the reality is often less glamorous. My first job involved synthesising Baited Remote Underwater Video (BRUV) datasets from across Australia. BRUV systems use … Continue reading What a national marine dataset taught us about the power of quality control and collaboration

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Practical Tools

From First Clicks to Building Esperdyne: A Personal Journey into Bat Bioacoustics.

Post provided by Ravi Umadi. On a humid, warm evening—close to 40 °C—in Mohali, India, I stood outside holding a bat detector, listening for something I had never heard before. Although I had never previously heard bat echolocation calls, bats themselves were not unfamiliar to me. One of my earliest memories from primary school is of a dark corner of my village school that housed … Continue reading From First Clicks to Building Esperdyne: A Personal Journey into Bat Bioacoustics.

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Field Methods, Practical Tools

Peering through the shell: tracking stress with heartbeats

Post provided by Lima F. P.; Pereira F. L.; Loureiro B.; Humet M.; Seabra R. How can we tell when an animal is stressed, long before it dies? For marine invertebrates like mussels, limpets, oysters, or crabs, one of the clearest signals comes from their hearts. Heart rate can vary in response to changes in the environment (such as temperature or oxygen), offering a non-invasive … Continue reading Peering through the shell: tracking stress with heartbeats

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Practical Tools

Making heatwaves in the wild: lessons from extreme fieldwork

Post provided by Pieter Arnold, Xuemeng Mu, James King We are a team of ecologists in Australia with keen interest in how plants and ecosystems will respond to climate change. Conducting research on the effects of forecasted climate change, and particularly extreme events like heatwaves, is extremely challenging to do in the field. We had to first convince ourselves that it would be possible to … Continue reading Making heatwaves in the wild: lessons from extreme fieldwork

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Ecology, Practical Tools

Smart cameras in the wild: A centralised solar-powered Raspberry Pi system for automated animal observation and environmental monitoring

Post provided by Marçal Pou-Rossell Many studies of animal behaviour – especially parental care – rely on short, fragmented observations. Whether due to battery limitations, human resources, or remote field conditions, collecting continuous data throughout an entire reproductive cycle is often just not feasible. As a result, key behaviours can go undocumented, and our understanding of how animals make decisions across time remains incomplete. We … Continue reading Smart cameras in the wild: A centralised solar-powered Raspberry Pi system for automated animal observation and environmental monitoring

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Ecology, Methods papers, Practical Tools

Capturing diversity below the species level using HyRAD : a nuclear-DNA enrichment-based capture method (HyRAD) applied to environmental DNA.

Post provided by Stéphanie Manel. Why use HyRAD for eDNA capture? Traditional population genetics approaches require sampling tissue from individuals, which is problematic in aquatic environments where specimen collection is often challenging. Filtering water allows researchers to collect environmental DNA (eDNA), genetic material shed by organisms into their surroundings. Unlike approaches targeting a single DNA barcode, HyRAD allows for the capture of multiple nuclear DNA … Continue reading Capturing diversity below the species level using HyRAD : a nuclear-DNA enrichment-based capture method (HyRAD) applied to environmental DNA.

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Practical Tools

Expanding Our View: The Benthic Observation Survey System (BOSS).

Post provided by Brooke Gibbons. Marine scientists often rely on underwater cameras to survey seabed habitats, but traditional methods come with limitations—small fields of view, restricted coverage, and logistical constraints. Enter the Benthic Observation Survey System (BOSS): a new wide-field, self-righting drop-camera system that significantly expands our ability to survey and map the seafloor. The Need for Better Benthic Surveys Most existing platforms use downward … Continue reading Expanding Our View: The Benthic Observation Survey System (BOSS).

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Field Methods, Practical Tools

From Kenya to Ohio – the inspiration for WildWing: an open-source, autonomous and affordable unmanned aerial system for animal behavioural video monitoring

Post provided by Jenna Kline, PhD Candidate, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA The story of the WildWing project began in 2022 when I enrolled in the Experiential Introduction to Imageomics course. For the fieldwork component of the course, I travelled to the Mpala Research Centre in Laikipia, Kenya. My course project advisors, Dr Tanya Berger-Wolf and Dr … Continue reading From Kenya to Ohio – the inspiration for WildWing: an open-source, autonomous and affordable unmanned aerial system for animal behavioural video monitoring

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Ecology, Field Methods, Practical Tools

Look inside: a handy tool for casting the enclosed nest structure of birds

Post provided by Jing-Chia Guo. To understand something, we often describe its appearance and shape: The ball is round, the can is cylinder, and the pillow is kind of rectangle. However, most natural creatures are irregular in shape, so it’s difficult for people to quantify or define them. Sometimes, scientists are even unable to get their hands on the objects they need, and that is … Continue reading Look inside: a handy tool for casting the enclosed nest structure of birds

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