Animal activity monitoring system for the laboratory and field

为了有效地在动物行为、生理学和生态学的界面上开展跨学科的野外和实验室研究计划，必须拥有一套能够对动物进行远程研究的工具。为了支持和扩大我们的研究计划，我们要求建立一个用于鱼类和水生爬行动物的远程动物活动监测系统。该系统将使用无源集成应答器技术。无源集成应答器(PIT)标签由集成电路芯片和线圈天线组成，当线圈被低频读取器线圈激励时，传输唯一的识别码。由于没有电池，标签体积小、价格便宜，并且没有电池寿命限制。因此，坑标记提供了在接近人口规模的范围内识别个人的机会，由于经济原因，这是其他遥测方法很难实现的。坑技术已成为利用野外坑阵列在各种系统中研究动物运动的重要工具，这些系统包括溪流、实验池和中间生态系统，所有这些系统都是研究小组经常使用的系统。几个共同申请者还就减少鱼和海龟的副渔获物和屏障上的鱼类通过评估等主题进行了应用保护研究，所有这些都将受益于这项技术。与应用程序相关的还有一个事实，即活动监测系统是模块化的，因此它也可以在卡尔顿和渥太华大学的湿地实验室中使用。在实验室中，PIT技术将通过量化鱼类的活动和行为为比较生理学研究提供额外的维度，这是迄今为止难以实现的。参与RTI申请的七名共同申请者(来自渥太华-卡尔顿生物研究所)在生态学、行为学和生理学领域有着不同和重叠的兴趣，重点是水生动物。共同申请者目前在许多项目上合作，但拟议的研究工具将增加我们合作进行跨学科研究和培训下一代综合生物学家的能力。

To effectively mount an interdisciplinary field- and laboratory-based research programme at the interface of animal behaviour, physiology, and ecology, it is essential to have a suite of tools that enable the remote study of animals. To support and expand our research programmes, we are requesting a Remote Animal Activity Monitoring System for use on fish and aquatic herpetefauna. The system will use passive integrated transponder technology. A passive integrated transponder (PIT) tag consists of an integrated circuit chip and coil antenna which, when energized by a low-radio frequency reader coil, transmits a unique identity code. Having no battery, the tags are small, inexpensive, and do not have battery life limitations. Consequently, PIT tagging offers opportunities for identifying individuals at a scale approaching that of the population, something that is rarely achievable for other telemetry methods, for economic reasons. PIT technology has become an important tool for studying animal movement using PIT arrays in the field in systems as diverse as streams, experimental ponds and mesocosms, all systems frequently used by the research team. Several of the co-applicants also conduct applied conservation research on topics such as by-catch reduction of fish and turtles and fish passage evaluation at barriers, all of which will benefit from this technology. Also relevant for the application is the fact that the activity monitoring system is modular so that it can also be used in the wetlabs at both Carleton and uOttawa. In the laboratory the PIT technology would provide an additional dimension to comparative physiology studies by enabling the quantification of fish activity and behaviour, something that has been difficult to achieve to date. The seven co-applicants (from the Ottawa-Carleton Institute of Biology) involved in this RTI application have varied and overlapping interests in the fields of ecology, behaviour, and physiology with a focus on aquatic animals. The co-applicants currently collaborate on a number of projects, but the proposed research tools will increase our capacity for collaborative interdisciplinary research and the training of the next generation of integrative biologists.