Towards a minimum reporting standard to promote animal welfare and data quality in biologging research

Abstract

Over the last six decades, the biologging research community has reduced instrument effects on study animals by miniaturizing devices, employing sophisticated release mechanisms, and developing other novel technological advancements. However, biologging devices can still impact animal physiology, behavior, and demography—the very biological metrics the instruments are meant to measure. Recent meta-analyses have emphasized the subjectivity of field-wide "rules of thumb"such as the 3% rule, but opportunities to quantify effects more objectively can be expensive or impossible to implement when instrumenting new species. There is therefore a time-sensitive need for systematic reporting of biologging instrument characteristics based on known effects to animal welfare and data quality. We used 202 biologging impact studies from the last thirty years to draw broad, multispecies connections between instrument characteristics and animal physiology, behavior, and/or demography. We build on impact studies that focus on a single species, instrument type, or attachment method to offer solutions applicable across those taxa, technologies, and methodologies. From the literature, we distilled eight best practices for biologging researchers with a particular focus on minimum reporting standards as a low-cost, high-impact way to promote animal welfare and data quality. We propose a preliminary minimum reporting standard, informed by the literature and presented as a machine-readable checklist, that biologging researchers can include with their manuscripts or data submissions to provide data for future meta-analyses. We also present an example of a completed checklist to demonstrate the feasibility of such a standard and a plan for community input and adoption via the International Bio-Logging Society. Robust biologging infrastructure, beginning with a minimum reporting standard informed by the literature on instrument impacts, will facilitate the expansion of biologging across the globe and across disciplines while ensuring animal welfare and improving data quality. As biologging instruments become less expensive and more accessible, researchers, journals, and funders are better positioned than ever to broaden and implement these standards.