The Movebank system for studying global animal movement and demography

• Published in: Methods in Ecology and Evolution
• Main Authors: Kays, Roland, Davidson, Sarah C., Berger, Matthias, Bohrer, Gil, Fiedler, Wolfgang, Flack, Andrea, Hirt, Julian, Hahn, Clemens, Gauggel, Dominik, Russell, Benedict, Kolzsch, Andrea, Lohr, Ashley, Partecke, Jesko, Quetting, Michael, Safi, Kamran, Scharf, Anne, Schneider, Gabriel, Lang, Ilona, Schaeuffelhut, Friedrich, Landwehr, Matthias, Storhas, Martin, Van Schalkwyk, Louis, Vinciguerra, Candace, Weinzierl, Rolf, Wikelski, Martin
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 2022
• Subjects: Animal behaviour; Animal tracking; Bio-logging; Cyberinfrastructure; FAIR data; Global positioning system (GPS); Live data; Movement; Findable; accessible; interoperable; and reusable (FAIR); Arctic
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.13767; https://repository.up.ac.za/handle/2263/86224

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT : White stork tracking and mortality data: Publicly available on Movebank in the ‘LifeTrack White Stork’ studies for Armenia (Study ID 10236270, Flack et al., 2015), Bavaria (ID 24442409, Fiedler, Flack, Schäfle, et al., 2019), Greece (ID 10449535, Flack et al., 2015), Kosova (ID 175720577, Maxhuni et al., data to be published upon paper acceptance), Moscow (ID 10596067, Fiedler, Flack, Schäfle, et al., 2019), Oberschwaben (ID 212096177, Fiedler et al., 2019b), Poland ECG (ID 25166516), Rheinland-Pfalz (ID 76367850, Fiedler, Hilsendegen, et al., 2019), Sicily (ID 79206236, Grasso et al., data to be published upon paper acceptance) and SW Germany (ID 21231406, Fiedler, Leppelsack, et al., 2019). Tracking data participating in the AAMA (Figure 5a): See data access instructions at www.movebank.org/cms/movebank-content/arctic-animal-movement-archive. MoveApps Apps and links to source code are publicly available from https://moveapps.org. Quantifying movement and demographic events of free-ranging animals is fundamental to studying their ecology, evolution and conservation. Technological advances have led to an explosion in sensor-based methods for remotely observing these phenomena. This transition to big data creates new challenges for data management, analysis and collaboration. We present the Movebank ecosystem of tools used by thousands of researchers to collect, manage, share, visualize, analyse and archive their animal tracking and other animal-borne sensor data. Users add sensor data through file uploads or live data streams and further organize and complete quality control within the Movebank system. All data are harmonized to a data model and vocabulary. The public can discover, view and download data for which they have been given access to through the website, the Animal Tracker mobile app or by API. Advanced analysis tools are available through the EnvDATA System, the MoveApps platform and a variety of user-developed applications. Data owners can share studies with select ...