Low resolution accelerometers can be used to develop time-energy budgets of wild fur seals from captive surrogates

Abstract

Background. Accurate time-energy budgets summarise an animal's energy expenditure in a given environment and are potentially a sensitive indicator of how an animal responds to changing resources. Deriving accurate time-energy budgets requires a precise measure of time spent in different activities, and an estimate of the energetic cost of that activity. Bio-loggers such as accelerometers may provide a solution for monitoring animals such as fur seals that make long-duration foraging trips over multiple days or weeks. Monitoring such behaviour may require low resolution recording due to the memory constraints of bio-loggers. The aim of this study was to evaluate if accelerometers recording at a low resolution could accurately classify and determine the cost of fur seal activity.

Validating accelerometry-derived proxies of energy expenditure using the doubly labelled water method in the smallest penguin species

“…Numerous studies using activity-budgets (derived from accelerometry or other methods) to estimate energy expenditure in free-ranging animals have been performed using estimates obtained from controlled conditions or from phylogenetically distant species moving in similar locomotory modes and in similar environments (Collins et al 2016;Goldstein 1988;Ladds et al 2018;Shaffer et al 2004). The poor predictive capacity of Approach 3 in the present study highlights the potential inaccuracy of such studies and the need for accurate species-specific and activity-specific energy expenditure values.…”