Newsletter| Issue 7 | January, 2026

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News & Views

Welcome to Issue No. 7 of the International Bio-Logging Society Newsletter

wishing you an insightful 2026 advancing bio-logging science worldwide!

We’re happy to share that we are expanding our presence to social media!!

You can now find us on Bluesky: @ibiols.bsky.social, where we will share activities related to our bio-logging community.

The heart of our communication will always remain this newsletter. This is our main channel, and it is where you will continue to receive the most complete, thoughtful, and important updates directly from us.

If you prefer to stay newsletter-only, nothing changes for you at all. And if you’d like to follow along on social media too, we would love to see you there.

In this Issue:

Updates from our Working Groups

The Best Practices and Data Standards Working Groups would like to highlight a recent paper by Payne et al. 2025 that makes broad, multispecies connections between bio-logging instrument characteristics (such as size or weight) and animal physiology, behavior, and/or demography.

Published in Animal Biotelemetry, the paper draws on over two hundred studies examining the impacts of bio-logging devices and identifies minimum reporting standards as a low-cost, high-impact way to promote both animal welfare and data quality. Payne et al. propose a preliminary minimum reporting standard (see figure below), informed by the literature and presented as a machine-readable checklist, that bio-logging researchers can include with their manuscripts or data submissions to support future meta-analyses.

The proposed standard, together with a plan for tentative adoption, will be further discussed in an upcoming Society webinar this year and at a workshop at the next International Bio-logging Symposium in 2027.

Tales from the Wild: Bio-Loggers in Action

By Yan Ropert-Coudert, Centre d’Études Biologiques de Chizé (CEBC), France

After decades studying penguins in East Antarctica, through a long-term monitoring program supported by the CNRS and WWF-UK, I could do fieldwork on Adélies and Gentoos on the other side of the continent. Thanks to a collaboration with our Uruguayan colleague Alvaro Soutullo, a team of 4 (Alvaro, Akiko Kato, Stefan Schoombie and I) spent 15 days on Ardley Island in the Peninsula.

Ardley is a small island, connected by an isthmus to the bigger King George Island at low tide, and home to Adélie and Gentoo penguins, but also Giant Petrels, Skuas, Storm Petrels, Weddell seals… The most striking thing there is the colour green! A colour which is absent from the Antarctic I know. But the weather changes rapidly: one day you feel like being in Scotland, the next day you are back to Antarctica with blizzard and snow covering everything. In Ardley, we deployed AxyTrek (GPS-acceleration and depth loggers) but we also deployed new tools developed by Stefan, who despite being trained as a biologist, also has the vibe of an engineer. He builds his own loggers and develops the software to analyse the data they collect.

His most clever logger is a HD camera-GPS-accelerometer-depth recorder. All in one! We collected videos of impressive quality and found that penguins don’t wait for the high seas to start feeding. There were swarms of krill meters from the shore. However, they were not alone in the coastal waters of the Bay between Ardley and King George. There sometimes were up to eight cruise ships at a time!

How does such a cohabitation work, well, maybe our data can help answer that?

Anyway, this was so different from the other side of the continent which is still preserved from tourism. I hope mankind will be able to keep some regions untouched by tourism.

Events & Opportunities

[Session] Harnessing Animal Movement for Biodiversity Monitoring: From Movement Trait Data to Biodiversity Indicators and Decision-Making.

[Workshop] Integrating Animal Movement into the Essential Biodiversity Variable Framework

Special Issues

Publications

Since our last newsletter there have been 92 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 span across ecology, conservation, ecosystem management and tagging methodology.

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

Biologging as a potential platform for resolving ocean environmental issues and threats: Towards the development of the Internet of Animals.

Feral cat video collars reveal differences in hunting behaviour between mammal, reptile and insect prey.

Power source, data retrieval method, and attachment type affect success of dorsally mounted tracking tag deployments in 37 species of shorebirds.

Using accelerometer-based behavioural classification to enhance scavenger conservation.

Extreme hunting efficiency in a carnivorous bat.

Job Opportunities

Are you hiring or have a job to share? Write to us and we will post your job!

Interested in studying the movement ecology of striped bass across the Maritime provinces? Want to gain foundational and advanced skills in acoustic telemetry, working alongside some of the world’s leading researchers in aquatic animal movement? 👉 Please send your application by February 1, 2026.

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!

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