RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 A miniaturized threshold-triggered acceleration data-logger for recording burst movements of aquatic animals
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 203828
DO 10.1101/203828
A1 Nozomi Nishiumi
A1 Ayane Matsuo
A1 Ryo Kawabe
A1 Nicholas Payne
A1 Charlie Huveneers
A1 Yuuki Y. Watanabe
A1 Yuuki Kawabata
YR 2017
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/10/16/203828.abstract
AB Animal-borne accelerometers are effective tools for quantifying the kinematics of animal behaviors, such as swimming, running, and flying, under natural conditions. However, quantifying burst movements of small and agile aquatic animals (e.g., small teleost fish), such as during predatory behavior, or while fleeing, remains challenging. To capture the details of burst movements, accelerometers need to sample at a very high frequency, which will inevitably shorten the duration of the recording or increase the size of the device. To overcome this problem, we developed a high-frequency acceleration data-logger that can be triggered by a manually-defined acceleration threshold, thus allowing the selective measurement of animal burst movements. We conducted experiments under laboratory and field conditions to examine the performance of the logger. The laboratory experiment using red seabream (Pagrus major) showed that the new logger could measure the kinematics of their escape behaviors (i.e., body beat cycles and maximum acceleration values). The field experiment using free-swimming yellowtail kingfish (Seriola lalandi) showed that the loggers trigger correctly (i.e., of the 18 burst movements, 17 were recorded by the loggers). We suggest that this new logger can be applied to measure the burst movements of various small and agile animals, whose movements may be otherwise difficult to measure.