Tracking small animals in complex landscapes: a comparison of localisation workflows for automated radio telemetry systems
Automated radio telemetry systems (ARTS) have the potential to revolutionise our understanding of animal movement by providing a near-continuous record of individual locations in the wild. However, localisation error in data generated by ARTS can be very high, especially in natural landscapes with complex vegetation structure and topography. This curtails the ecological questions that may be addressed with this technology. Here, we set up an ARTS grid in a valley with heterogeneous vegetation cover in the Colombian high Andes and applied an analytical pipeline to test the effectiveness of localisation methods. We performed calibration trials to simulate animal movement in high- or low-flight, or walking on the ground, and compared workflows with varying decisions related to signal cleaning, selection, smoothing, and interpretation, along with four multilateration approaches. We also quantified the influence of spatial features on the system’s accuracy. We tested the grid by deploying t