Post provided by Michelle Shero

To survive and reproduce, all animals must be able to extract sufficient energy from their environment. It takes energy to forage, but animals can recover those calories if they can successfully capture enough prey – and the animal’s weight tells us about its net energetic costs versus gains. Animals that remain in positive energy-balance can then afford to devote more energy towards growth and reproduction. In this blog post, Michelle Shero of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution guides us through a new method outlined in her team’s recent Methods in Ecology and Evolution paper ‘Tracking wildlife energy dynamics with unoccupied aircraft systems and three-dimensional photogrammetry’. The team uses drone imagery to 3-D model and ‘weigh’ large groups of free-living animals.

Continue reading “Cover Stories: Making strides towards weighing whole wildlife populations in 3D”