Animal Biotelemetry: First anniversary

Editorial

The 4th of April marks the first anniversary of the launch of Animal Biotelemetry, and an occasion to thank the scientific community for your support of the journal. We are thankful to the Associate Editors, who sent manuscripts out for review, the editorial board members, who have encouraged their colleagues and students to publish in the journal, and finally the expert reviewers of the articles. The bottom line is that Animal Biotelemetry is built on the foundation of your work, and relies on the support of the scientific community to ensure that it continues to provide a useful resource to researchers in this field.

In the first year, the journal has been very well received, publishing 21 original articles and five reviews/editorials. We have published original research articles on the physiology, behavior, and ecology of diverse species ranging from Chinook salmon [1], European silver eels [2], white sharks [3], bluetongue lizards [4] , bowhead whales [5], and brown bears [6]. We also have published a variety of techniques-based articles on ultraviolet radiation for sterilization of surgical tools [7], different types of tissue-closure sutures during tag implantation [8], tag attachment designs [9], and criteria for determining whether a tag has been released and is floating on the surface versus being attached to a whale shark [10]. Articles have also been published on the analysis of telemetry data such as the effect of high detection probabilities on survival models in release-recapture studies [11] and methods for selecting a bandwidth in home-range analyses [12]. In addition to this, reviews have been published on the present, past, and future of freshwater tracking studies [13], tracking studies in India [14], and the use of accelerometer sensors to monitor unseen behaviors [15].

Most articles have been accessed over 1000 times and two articles stand out as being particularly highly accessed. The first is an original research article describing the two-year migration of an adult female white sharks [3] and the second a review of tracking animals in freshwater with electronic tags [13]. The first article has been accessed 12,242 times, while the second 5,399 times.

Animal Biotelemetry is a showcase for telemetry-based, original research on the physiology, behavior, and ecology of species. At this single site one can also learn about methods of attachment and effects of tagging on a diversity of species, and locate reviews on the applicability to one’s study of a particular sensor, transmitter, or mode of telemetry. It is now truly an international journal with the lead authors of papers published during the first year of the journal’s existence from Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, India, Greenland, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States. In the future, the journal will build on these successes and continue to disseminate our contributions widely thanks to the open access model of the journal. Hence, I encourage all of you to publish the results of your studies in Animal Biotelemetry, where they can be widely read within the research community and beyond.