News & Views 

Welcome to Issue No. 5 of the International Bio-Logging Society Newsletter! 

Our newsletter is growing into a true community effort, written by our community, 

for our community. Over the past three months, the bio-logging world has been buzzing with activity, from congresses and conferences to field sites. We share discoveries, ideas, and push the boundaries of bio-logging science to support global conservation and management.

In this Issue:

Bio-Logging Bulletin from our Correspondents

By Viola Panigada, PhD student in Marine Science and Conservation, Duke University, USA Viola attended the One Ocean Science Congress (OOSC), a UNOC3 Special Event dedicated to Science (3-6 June, Nice, France)
Viola says: “At OOSC, scientists and early-career ocean professionals from all over the world presented their research to be used as scientific background for UNOC3. There, I had the chance to present my work on fin whale movements and habitat use in the Mediterranean Sea, which we tracked using satellite telemetry. This was part of my BSc thesis, and I am furthering research on the topic for my PhD.”
Several research vessels were in Nice as part of the UNOC3 Flotilla, including the Malizia Explorer — a new sailing boat dedicated to science, communication and outreach. After its christening in Monaco during UNOC, I took part in the Malizia’s first mission in Dénia, south of Spain, for a whale tracking fieldwork with Tethys Research Institute and the Valencia Polytechnic University. Every year, in June-July, fin whales are observed passing through the area on their way out of the Mediterranean Sea, towards the Atlantic Ocean.To learn more about their outbound movements and inform conservation measures accordingly, we have been tracking fin whales in the past couple of years, attaching small satellite transmitters on their dorsal fins. This year, we have deployed three tags — in addition to others from previous years, and all three individuals have already left the Mediterranean towards profitable feeding grounds in the North Atlantic Ocean. Looking forward to following these animals along and learning more about their movement patterns!
By Charlotte Lorand, PhD student at Faculty of Applied Ecology, Agricultural Sciences and Biotechnology, Campus Evenstad, University of Inland Norway Charlotte attended the “Wolves Across Borders” conference (2-6 June, Lunteren, the Netherlands)
	In early June I joined the 2025 Wolves Across Borders conference in Lunteren, the Netherlands – a young international conference gathering wolves’ specialists from across the world to discuss new research and current interconnected problematics. Movement and behavior have always formed a core part of research on wolf ecology, and it was exciting to witness how different projects handle monitoring challenges and use location data to answer ecological and societal questions as diverse as home ranges and habitat use, activity patterns, pack dynamics, interspecific interactions, or patterns of livestock depredation.
As the Scandinavian Wolf-Human Interaction Project, we presented fine-scale methods based on acceleration data, aiming at field assessments of energetic use and instant behavior recognition. These talks attracted a lot of attention and interest from attendants, who seemed eager to integrate such methods into their existing workflow, when compatible with their monitoring devices. There ​seems to be definite interest in obtaining detailed indicators from biologging devices, either to reframe or delve deeper into the most pressing questions in wolf ecology, and ample room for integrating recent biologging advances into this approach.

Tales from the Wild: Bio-Loggers in Action

Tales from the Wild: Bio-Loggers in Action

Hello! My name is Alex McInturf, and I’m a research associate in the Big Fish Lab at Oregon State University (OSU) and co-coordinator of the Irish Basking Shark Group. Recently, I’ve been working with a team of incredible collaborators at OSU, Trinity College Dublin and Stanford University to learn more about the behaviors and biomechanics of basking sharks. Basking sharks are the world’s second-largest fish, often reaching over 8 m in length, and one of three filter-feeding sharks. As such, they offer a unique challenge to study. They cannot be lured to the boat via attractants like bait, and we certainly can’t bring them onboard. So, we have to get creative when it comes to collecting data, deploying tags from the boat as the sharks swim by and using GoPros and drones to obtain sex and length, respectively. An even bigger challenge? These animals are globally endangered and can only be found seasonally in specific coastal “hotspots” worldwide. Luckily, there is one place where numbers appear to be stable or even increasing: Ireland.

Since 2022, my colleagues and I have been using a Frankenstein-style set of biologgers to learn more about why basking sharks come to Ireland. In general, we are testing two hypotheses that are likely not mutually exclusive: 1) that the sharks are taking advantage of seasonally profitable foraging habitat; and 2) that basking sharks may be social, cueing in on the presence of others in this location. To do so, we have been deploying CATS animal-borne camera tags to measure the frequency and energetic cost of feeding, and in some cases actively tracking tagged sharks with a boat-based echosounder to measure the surrounding prey field. Simultaneously, we have also been deploying acoustic proximity loggers, the detections of which can be used to create social networks to learn more about why these animals aggregate. We are in the process of continuing our fieldwork and analyzing our existing results, which we hope to present at the next conference! A huge thank you to my team, including Taylor Chapple, Nick Payne, Dave Cade, Jeremy Goldbogen, Astrid Leitner, Mason Dean, Nick Massett, Dave Edwards, Mick Sheeran, James Sulikowski and many others who have made this work possible.

Hello, my name is Delphine Dubray, I am a PhD student at the Okavango Research Institute, University of Botswana. My research focuses on the impact of surface water on large herbivore ecology, particularly the long-distance movements of African elephants (Loxodonta africana) and landscape connectivity. For this, I combine remote sensing with data collection in the field in Botswana.

Ten elephants have been equipped with GPS collars recording their location hourly over more than 3 years. These data revealed that elephants travel seasonally across long-distances, following long-established “highways”. One collared elephant journeyed over 340 km into Zimbabwe to celebrate the New Year! Venturing into the remote bush to locate these elephant highways identified through satellite data and seeing firsthand where the elephants had walked has been an exciting experience!I have installed camera traps along several of these trails. This will help determine how frequently elephants and other herbivores use these pathways. I am also characterizing the trails and mapping water sources. This approach aims to understand why certain areas are more heavily used as corridors, the role of water availability in elephant movement and how climate change may impact these movements.Every six weeks, I embark on a 2.5-hour solo drive along deep-sand tracks to reach my study area. Once there, I walk along elephant pathways in dense scrub to check the camera traps, accompanied by a professional guide and his tracker. During my last trip, I arrived just an hour after an elephant had ripped two camera traps from the trees they were attached to!  I am grateful to my supervisor Professor Emily Bennitt for taking me as her student, this PhD is a dream come true, and to my co-supervisors Dr Kate Evans from Elephants for Africa for the GPS collar data, and Dr Simon Chamaillé-Jammes for his guidance

Events & Opportunities

• Movement Ecology of Animals – Gordon Research Conference. July 27 – August 1 2025, Across Scales, Ventura, California, USA. 

Movement Ecology Across Scales: join us for a conference exploring the fascinating links between movement ecology, ecological frameworks, and conservation, addressing how movements across scales influence biodiversity, ecosystems, and species interactions. Sessions will cover cutting-edge topics, from movement adaptations in the Anthropocene to forecasting for conservation, alongside advancements in modeling, tools, and data sharing. 

• International Wildlife Congress, September 1-4 2025, Lillehammer, Norway
• BES – Movement Ecology Annual Meeting, September 2-3 2025, University of East Anglia, UK., 
• Living Data 2025, October 21-24 2025, Bogotá, Colombia

Special Issues

Conservation Physiology special issue: “Insights and tools from biologging for conservation physiology”. Submission deadline: 30th November 2025

Publications

Since our last newsletter there have been 27  bio-logging papers published (based on a Web of Science search using the keywords “bio-telemetry” OR “biologging” OR “bio-logging” OR “biotelemetry” OR “animal-borne”). 

These papers range from understanding the ecology of species to new tagging technology.

 Here are some examples of the work going on in our community:

Steep slopes, shallow angles: mountain ungulates create their own topography through movements

VANTAGE: An open-source application for visualisation, navigation and analysis of video and ancillary time-series data in bio-logging studies

Deep-sea ascending predation by king penguin and its prey reaction observed by animal-borne video camera

Practical guidelines for validation of supervised machine learning models in accelerometer-based animal behaviour classification

Job Opportunities

Are you hiring or have a job to share?

Write to us and we will post your job!

• Fully-funded PhD position on animal migration, School of Biological Sciences, Monash University
• PhD Position Gull Foraging Ecology in the North Sea – NO-REGRETS Project, University of Amsterdam (UvA)
• Center for Avian Population Studies, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, College of Agriculture & Life Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, Research Associate (Statistical Scientist)
• Faculty of Forestry & Environmental Management Canada Excellence Research Chair in forest biodiversity conservation – tenured full professor
• Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Climate Change, Environment and Health

Useful websites:

AcademicsJobsOnline

Euraxess

Pacific Seabird Group Job Board (with links to other resources)

Stay tuned for the next Newsletter of the IBioLS in 3 months! 

We are thrilled to have you as part of our community.

If you have any inquiry or want to be part of the next Newsletter, 

please do not hesitate to contact intl.biologging.society@gmail.com.

Don’t get lost, (bio)-log yourself in this diverse community!