Credit: Adam Yaney-Keller / Monash University.
Drones are emerging as a critical scientific tool and revolutionising the way scientists gather data on how animals' bodies work in the wild, new research from Monash University and Phillip Island Nature Parks has found.
A review of published scientific papers has found 136 that used drones to research wildlife ecophysiology, the study of how animals' bodies work, and how that relates to the natural environment.
The practice is steadily gaining altitude, beginning with a single study in 2010, reaching seven studies in 2018, and more than tripling to 27 by 2023.
These included 63 wildlife species studied in marine environments and across every continent.
Lead author Adam Yaney-Keller, a Monash University PhD candidate, said drones are a gamechanger for studying large marine mammals in particular.
"The ability to study the internal workings of the largest animals on the planet has previously been very difficult," Yaney-Keller said.
"You can't exactly keep some animals, like blue whales, in a tank while you measure their body condition, so there have been a lot of advancements in using the images from drones to remotely obtain these metrics.
"Some particularly cool advancements have been in using sample plates attached to drones and flying it through a whale's blow, the exhaled air when they come to the surface to breathe, to sample their microbiomes, hormones, genetics, and survey for diseases which may be affecting wild populations."
Professor Richard Reina, Head of Monash University's Ecophysiology and Conservation Research Group in the School of Biological Sciences, has spent decades studying animals in the wild and seen first hand the benefits of technological advancement in recent years.
"The field is making great progress in overcoming the 'air gap', which is the space between an animal and a remote measurement tool like a drone," Professor Reina said.
"The innovative methods being developed in the field mean we are overcoming the distance and figuratively closing that gap, meaning we are avoiding methods that are invasive or influence the animal's behaviour, and importantly researchers and animals alike are safer.
"We are now using drones to measure body size, health conditions, vital signs like heart rate and temperature, and the make-up of microbiomes and genetics, all of which are really scaling up monitoring efforts for research, conservation and management."
In addition to marine mammals, drones are being used to study everything from manta rays and sharks to crocodiles, giraffes and swans.
The research shows significant advancements in tracking their movements to learn about how their bodies move, what their energy requirements might be, how humans may be stressing them out, and what sort of diseases they might be facing.
Phillip Island Nature Parks Marine Scientist Rebecca McIntosh said while there is still a lot of room to grow, the new technology promises an exciting future in studying wildlife physiology from the air.
"At Phillip Island Nature Parks, we have been using drones since 2016 to monitor the status and record the population of the Australian fur seals," she said.
"This review demonstrates the benefits of drone technology for wildlife research around the world and highlights exciting future applications for conservation."
The review has been undertaken as part of Yaney-Keller's PhD research on the use of thermal imaging from drones to detect and respond to plastic entanglements on wild seals on Phillip Island.
It has been published in peer-reviewed journal Biological Reviews and is available online at: doi.org/10.1111/brv.13181
