Sciences of Life Academy Highlights from July 9, 2007

Wildlife Sensors

If a deer frolics in the forest, does it make a sound? And what does it see and eat?

Professor Josh Millspaugh and a group of eight students experimented with the wildlife sensors that he is developing to answer those questions Monday, on the first official day of the University of Missouri Sciences of Life Academy.

Using a process called radio telemetry, Millspaugh tracks populations of animals including large mammals like deer, as well as small animals like mourning doves to find out about their migration patterns and the transmission of diseases.

But to get a fuller picture of the secret life of animals in the wild, Millspaugh and his team are working to improve the energy efficiency and battery life of the sensors while adding other sensing modules that record video, sound and GPS coordinates, too.

"We hope that one day our research will provide fine-scale information on disease transmission, chronic wasting disease and animal/vehicle collisions," Millspaugh says.

"Our goal is to understand more about these phenomena and hopefully remediate them if we can. Preliminary research indicates that the landscapes and the ways roads are built may actually funnel deer toward those areas. With more information, we hope to find a way to lessen the occurrence."

Students got a crash course in radio telemetry before being set loose with their own antennas to find two radio transmitters no larger than a dime that had been hidden around the Life Sciences building.