From biologging to conservation: Tracking individual performance in changing environments

Under an accelerating biodiversity crisis, increased urbanization, habitat fragmentation, and climate change require new approaches to assess conservation impact. We argue that animal biologging is a cost-effective method for monitoring biodiversity at its source, including tracked animals and the habitats they occupy. Biologging, or animal-mounted sensors to record data, can act as a reporting, measurement, and verification system, and deliver direct insights into environments of selection. Using a case study of migrating white storks (Ciconia ciconia), we show that biologging yields real-time measurements of individual performance, mechanistic insights into environments of selection, and the potential for gene flow across anthropogenically influenced habitats. These insights can inform the success of biodiversity targets and conservation initiatives and improve real-time species management. At the global scale, we further illustrate that biologging studies display substantial bias in the types of environments and human conditions sampled. Studies appear biased toward sparsely populated areas and remain particularly rare in highly urbanized areas, areas experiencing high rates of recent forest fragmentation, and key areas for global biodiversity conservation efforts. We highlight the need for equitable access to technology to leverage the biodiversity potential of biologging in the Global South. Advances in software-defined tracking technology will soon give real-time information on energy budgets, survival, reproduction, and ultimately demographic processes and population-level parameters. When deployed into areas most needed, biologging can operationalize access to key measures of biodiversity maintenance such as gene flow, especially in difficult-to-access areas that are key to the future persistence of a species.