Motus system update from Scott Weidensaul

Eastern Meadowlark is among the species being tracked by researchers using the Motus system.

November 7, 2022 — Here’s an update on the Motus Wildlife Tracking System from author and researcher Scott Weidensaul:

Our USFWS-funded work building out the New England network will be finished in the next month or two, bringing us to more than 50 new stations in the region. More broadly, Motus coverage is exploding, closing in on 1,600 receivers worldwide, with the greatest density in eastern North America but with rapidly expanding coverage in Latin America (especially Mexico and Central America) and the Caribbean, which is critical for tracking Neotropical migrants. There are also large regional efforts like ours, at work and with funding, in the Midwest, Great Plains and Chihuahuan Desert, intermountain West and along the Pacific Flyway. 

Along with several state agency partners, we just got a big USFWS grant to build out the network in the interior Southeast U.S. over the next two years, plus funding for a variety of tracking projects focusing on species of greatest conservation need, from Canada warblers, rusty blackbirds and saw-whet owls to bog turtles, long-eared bats, eastern towhees and eastern meadowlarks.

As for the data it’s already generating, check out the Motus publications page (https://motus.org/data/publications) — something like 200 papers already published using Motus data and technology. Most of these are single-species studies, like one that used Motus to determine the migratory connectivity between populations of Swainson’s warbler, but there are more and more using broader Motus data to address big questions. For example, the USFWS currently has a large number of Motus-equipped buoys off the Atlantic coast in areas to be developed for wind, to assess the degree of migration through those areas. Interestingly, one recent paper from Europe using Motus found that other survey methods significantly underestimated the scale of offshore passerine migration and, perhaps, the risk from offshore wind: Underestimated scale of songbird offshore migration across the south-eastern North Sea during autumn, Brust and Vera 2021.