We are planning a radio-tracking project on the Giant African Swallowtail - Papilio antimachus in Liberia. Of course, it will not be an easy task to do, so we would like to gather as much information on the available techniques as possible, before we invest in the equipments. My colleagues are trying to convince me, that we should use various fixed and geologially well positioned receiver stations but I would still vote for a single mobile flying unit, which will be able to follow the tracked butterfly. My biggest problem is the real-time communication between the receivers and a server to ensure that actually the receivers can sense the signal and from the signal we are able to position the specimen. These questions might sound trivial to many of you, but as I am not good at maths and physics I need clear explanations.
The questions are:
1. Is it possible to calculate-estimate position if the signal is received by a single station (like a radar), or I would certainly need three signals for triangulation?
2. Is it possible to equipe the receivers with a communication device, which would allow real-time transmission between the specimen and our data-server? We would prefer mobile communication or mobile internet, as there is 100% coverage in the area.
3. If we equip more than a single receiver on a traverse, would the distance between our receivers sufficient enough for accurate triangulation?
4. In certain papers there was mention of rovers, which followed the specimens using the existing road network. This equipment-receiver should also calculate direction and distance from a single signal, but I found no further explanation on this method.
5. Is there any afforable method and equipment to follow the specimen in the air e.g. drones, quadrocopters, which can carry a gps unit and or digital camera and has battery capacity to stay in the air for 5-6 hours a day?
Of course your answers will raise further questions, but this is the first "batch".
I hope many of you can help me to understand the methods and the entire radio-tracking process better at the end .
Digging deep into the transmitters we used for Monarch Butterfly experiment [http://bit.ly/1fdIj4l] I found the following information
"The transmitters—which weigh 0.01 ounce (0.3 gram) and are about 0.4 inch (1 centimeter) long—are glued to the insects' undersides. A single wire antenna runs the length of the abdomen, and a tiny battery powers the device for up to a week.
Wikelski has a receiver that picks up the transmissions within a range of about one mile (one and a half kilometers) on the ground and five miles (eight kilometers) in the air."
Safi, wow, your question is really interesting and I would like to see the possible answers as well! I have noticed that also microchips can be used for such things but it seems that the study was still unpublished so I do not know any details - http://www.csiro.au/Portals/Media/Bee-sensors-take-flight-to-help-farmers.aspx
You should look up this paper where they trace paths of honey bees.
The flight paths of honeybees
recruited by the waggle dance
J. R. Riley1, U. Greggers2, A. D. Smith1, D. R. Reynolds3 & R. Menzel2
Very interesting. I would like to know what transmitter are you using and what is the transmission range ?
check out about a little experiment of that type here http://glimpsesoflawrence.blogspot.com/2009/05/radio-tagging-monarch-butterflies.html
Fascinating project! I guess these swallowtails migrate over long distances, so I wonder how much of a bias will be included when just checking a few and expected, fixed points, but I guess, this could be a working start of such a project, since it appears be a rather big challenge to follow a butterfly over longer distances with any good equipment. I am curious, how a satisfying solution will look like, since I expect any major weight on even a strong butterfly may cause a change in flying behaviour and distance.
Thanks for the answers, at the moment we are trying to find transmitters, which we can track from 200-400 m in line of sight. We need your experience and answers to find the best solution for the project. As the butterfly specimens normally stay above the canopy of the rainforest (when flying), it could be tracked either from a well positioned receiver or followed by a drone. The main question with the fixed receivers, what if the butterfly decides to fly out of the monitored area? These are among the main questions: what is the actual habitat use of P. antimachus and how large area is sufficient to protect a vial population of the species? It is the same question with the drone: how can we track the specimen if it decides to fly longer distance that we expected? So we would sort of need to over-insure ourselves.
Thanks for clarifying, my immediate assumption of a heavily migrating species is obviously wrong and you expect the endangered colonies to stay (more or less) in place, or at least within a region. This may help those with experience in the technical equipment, but I think it may be very difficult if only the males fly over the rainforest and the females lower - escaping the radar. Good luck with your project!
Thanks Robert! Unfortunately we will never be able to catch a female as they always stay in and above the canopy. However, we have some chance to catch males as they come up to grassy hilltops to display. We tested it this year. Find out more about this behaviour in my short paper: http://web.b.ebscohost.com/abstract?direct=true&profile=ehost&scope=site&authtype=crawler&jrnl=03005267&AN=90619887&h=6%2bB8ORm1YclzbqugzU92K5MFwlEPRsLDhS8R%2fxXxO%2bRQYmZgpWLgPmr98SYNdrj4nu2uxsRrL212tEwBIfGiPw%3d%3d&crl=c
If you cannot get access, please feel free to request the paper.
This species is extremely sedentary, males are not moving more than 1km of radius, but as you know...nothing is known concerning females. Most of time males are doing hill toping like many Papilionidae and going down to get some mineral salts (to increase their potentialities of coupling) regularly. I saw this species in Cameroon. The flight is really a marvellous show. I've got the feeling (but no measurements) that males are coming to mud every...more or less every 3 or 4 hours always in the same place. P. zalmoxis seems to have a much more messy behaviour. I think that you will be able to predict behaviour of antimachus males rather...easily...the challenge for me is to try it on zalmoxis....or rex
Good luck
Cheers from Luc
Luc, why would males come to mud every 3 or 4 hours in the same place? If it is the same place, then obviously it is satisfying their chemical needs, as well as water. If they need to come every three or four hours to replenish their supplies, then are the supplies being expended at that rate? Or is a little used at a time?
Why you are not using GPS GSM transmitters? Probably you can not find small enough transmitters. I think that the triangulation of your species from permanent receiver station might be an option this is particularly useful when you have many individuals that move far and wide in difficult relief (detailed description in http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00222930701835308#.Uvm5oGJ_uSo). The error of the triangulation system must be assessed (in my case with vultures it was 1 km but for my species that use 4500 km2 it is ok) (check https://www.researchgate.net/publication/256940602_Error_Assessment_of_a_Telemetry_System_for_Eurasian_Black_Vultures_(Aegypius_monachus)?ev=prf_pub).
With mobile unit (you should now well the area) you might be able to reduce the error (detecting also visually the species) but the cost of the research will go very high. You mast decide which precision (Euclidian error) of your locations is appropriate to serve the goals of your study.
Conference Paper Error Assessment of a Telemetry System for Eurasian Black Vu...
Peter I can't tell you really.
Only thing I noticed that every 3 /4 hours there were two or three males coming together staying something like 10 minutes on mud. I stayed three days in a village named Ekonjo on the slopes of the mount Cameroon and I observed this behaviour during all my short stay.
Typically the kind of behaviour that Szabolcs is searching to explain/follow.
I've got a friend who managed to follow dragonflies with a GPS device but....in an open field....I think that the problem with antimachus will be also the density of the forest.
Cheers from Luc
Hi!
Just some pieces of advice. If you go for the fixed stations, it is probable that the fixes are inaccurate sometimes. Consider using a mobile hand device as support. With it you can triangulate (from two different positions) stationary or slow animals. And using a technique called homing-in, you can get to the area/tree the where the animal is at the moment. This is an amazing source of first hand information on habitat use, movement patterns, etc… you could hardly obtain from fixed antennas. Furthermore, you can assess the accuracy of the fixes obtained with the fixed devices, and in cases when only one fixed antenna is detecting the emission, check its position. Last but not least, always bear in mind you are not tracking animals, but tracking transmitters. Sometimes weird things happens and that is the cause, a hand deployed receptor helps with that too.
Best luck,
Jabi
Fortunately, butterflies can carry more weight than the bees we monitor. Range to transmitter/receiver may be a problem. Harmonic radar usually has longer range, but can only track one individual at a time. An active RFID chip has longer range than a passive chip. Catching, attaching, and expecting an insect with a chip glued to it to act normally may be asking a bit much - we put the first RFID chips on bees and decided that the 'chipping' of the bee and the chip itself all affected bee behavior. Remember also, you're likely to lose most of the chips.
For more open areas, we prefer our LIDAR systems that can locate and map insects with decimeter resolution. Had to spend 10 years getting portable systems - the first was in a 14 ft cargo trailer. With LIDAR, we can speciate insects without using any markers or chips. The LIDAR looks for unique signals such as wing-beat frequency to isolate the insects of interest.
Interesting topic, thanks for further information and the link to your abstract. I remember hill-topping of some swallowtail species in Europe (Iphyclides podalirius, P. machaon) and the US (some very similar to P. machaon in Europe, and some Iphyclides), but am more eager to find (and fotograph) an extinct or hardly proven species in Germany (Ph. sacerdos) in a humid area with Ph. apollo, but it then might be just some migration or transportation by wind from Austria... My (and others) wild expectations include there could be some mixtures. I guess, if any of the detection systems you are discussing here will work, it may also be used to find the females.
Digging deep into the transmitters we used for Monarch Butterfly experiment [http://bit.ly/1fdIj4l] I found the following information
"The transmitters—which weigh 0.01 ounce (0.3 gram) and are about 0.4 inch (1 centimeter) long—are glued to the insects' undersides. A single wire antenna runs the length of the abdomen, and a tiny battery powers the device for up to a week.
Wikelski has a receiver that picks up the transmissions within a range of about one mile (one and a half kilometers) on the ground and five miles (eight kilometers) in the air."
Wow, Vijay, this sounds fascinating. I guess this could be one solution for the question originator, especially since his butterflies appear to be even much bigger and perhaps stronger than the famous Monarch butterfly which could fly with even 40% load of battery and equipment. Maybe there are lighter or bigger batteries useful for the Giant project.
True, and the work we did was more than 4 years back, so I am sure the technology has improved since then. I have no clue on precision of the locations though.
Luc: P. antimachus is probably not sedentary, but males regularly come to hilltops and they might (or might not) stay around for quite a while (e.g. I recognised males with damaged wings visiting the same spot after a week). We have to find out where they disappear when they finally leave the hilltops. In the Nimba Mountains in Liberia it is a very sensitive question, because we do not know, whether the butterflies breed in the upland-submontane rainforests, or they congregate on hilltops, flying up to utilise the microhabitat only temporarily and they actually breed in the surrounding (not protected) lowland forest. In this P. antimachus might prove to be an umbrella species and could be recommeded to use it as a tool for protecting a larger area of rainforest (for example, where there is not forest elephants like in the Nimba Mountains).
Btw: I'll be on Mt. Cameroon this November so I'll might be able to visit-observe your antimachus spot in Ekonjo.
Vivaj: that is the receiver we would need! Is it available or was designed particularly for your Monarch project?
I haven't been involved with the project myself, but our group has been successfully following butterflies using harmonic radars. I suggest the following paper (if not already mentioned before): Ovaskainen et al. (2008) Tracking butterfly movements with harmonic radar reveals an effect of population age on movement distance. PNAS 105(49):19090-5
Szalbolcs
So ....you will see, it is not so easy to go there...first you will have to go Kribi = the botanical garden and ask for authorization (= money). Later you will have to negociate in the village with the chief (it was in 2000, if it is the same: bring money + wisky). After from Ekonjo...more or less half of day of walking, but in general the "spirits" are not "agree" that you can reach the right place (= money). Then there is only one hill free from trees in the area. That's there that you will see antimachus.
I'm almost sure that the antimachus I saw there were always the same 4 males. That's why I consider them as sedentary. But as I told you I was only staying there only 3 days....
In Ekonjo (really in the village) if you collect by night...it is extremely rich especially for Sphingidae
Good luck !!!!
Cheers from Luc
It sounds really interesting! If you finally decide to use radio-tags, perhaps it is useful for you to know that you only need 2 fixes to track the position of your butterflies, although the mean accuracy of the locations is often higher when using 3 signals. This is because fixes can be estimated either by biangulation (mere intercept) or by triangulation (intercept centering) with a software like LOAS...
Luc, thanks for the directions, it would be very interesting to make comparison of the behaviour to what we observed in Liberia. Btw: we will sample Shingidae on Mt. Cameroon, as we try compare pollinator communities along elevation grandients on the mountain. We'll spend 6 weeks there this year.
Hello, It´s possible to get the exact position, with the modern systems of GPS. You can visit this web:
http://www.microsensory.com/
They have a receptor that it gives the exact position , it isn´t necesary to get several points for have the position of the animals.
If you have any problem for contact with they, i can you to help you.
Regards
I think those systems that Javier Rodriguez-Siles recommends are OK for big animals (like cats), but not butterflies. Or did I miss something? What is the weight of the system?
Exactly. Those devices are simply too big even for the biggest butterflies. The harmonic radar is superb, but I am afraid its capabilities are quite limited in a rugged terrain covered by tropical rainforest. VHF tracking seems to be the only workable option - even though it is not going to be easy either.
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