Data analysis
Movebank is used by thousands of researchers to collect, manage, share, visualize, analyze, and archive their animal tracking and sensor data.
Movebank is an ecosystem of tools used by thousands of researchers to collect, manage, share, visualize, analyze, and archive their animal tracking and sensor data. In Movebank, researchers manage data on over 1,600 animal species from all continents. These data underlie more than 1,000 published papers and are used by a growing number of government agencies and conservation organizations.
The solutions offered by Movebank are changing the way biologists study the behavior and life histories of animals. They’re also being used to answer some of the biggest questions, such as: how is climate change affecting arctic mammals? Why have 3 billion birds disappeared across North America in the last three decades? And what would wildlife look like without humans?
A system co-designed by Sarah Davidson and Martin Wikelski from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior (MPI-AB), and Roland Kays from North Carolina State University, as well as Thomas Mueller from the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt, the Movebank ecosystem is rooted in a database storing the data collected from animal tags, including those generated by the ICARUS system. The data repository is managed by the University of Konstanz and the MPI-AB, as well as the Senckenberg Museum. Currently, it is used by over 4000 data owners globally, who manage over 8 billion animal location and sensor measurements across more than 8000 studies, with thousands of active tags sending over 25 million new location and other sensor records daily.
Tackling big problems
Location and sensor data, on their own, have limited value. Many more steps need to happen to turn those data into meaningful biological knowledge. That’s where Movebank’s other components come in.
As a first step, the Movebank website helps visualize data by displaying animal tracks on maps, which scientists and the public can browse. Importantly, data are restricted when species are of particular concern. Scientists working with animals at risk of poaching, for example, will share data for only specific reasons, such as to support wildlife managers who are monitoring movements of hunted animals.
To give the movement data context, scientists can annotate their animal tracks with hundreds of environmental parameters provided by global remote sensing products and weather reanalyzes. And when they need a particular tool, scientists can turn to Movebank’s development section—MoveApps—to work with coders on creating bespoke apps to analyze data. One of these apps, called the Morning Report, visualizes data daily and flags when a sudden clustering of GPS points suggests that an animal might have died.
These tools open a window into the intimate lives of animals, such as when they give birth or die, thus giving scientists the power to protect species at their most vulnerable moments. For example, a long-term study of 171 white storks in Movebank revealed that most birds died in Europe by electrocution from landing on power lines, while most deaths in Africa were due to hunting And as more animal tracking data are collected, scientists are able to conduct the large-scale analyses needed to understand global phenomena.
Crowdsourcing discoveries
Beyond the scientific community, Movebank also harnesses the brainpower of amateur animal-watchers worldwide. Movement data from Movebank is fed into the Animal Tracker app, which gives everyone with a smartphone the opportunity to actively participate in research projects.
The recently added Movebank Life History Museum, MoMu, provides a universally unique ID – an global animal passport – to each tracked animal. Each individual also has its own website, its own email address and its own lifetime track.
Importantly, the MoMu will also feature an “ideas board” that allows e.g., the amateur, wildlife, hunter, farmer and indigenous communities to stimulate scientists to collaborate with them to test their ideas: a true enabling tool to learn from the cultural knowledge of those who know animals best in their daily lives.
