Date:
Location:
The emerging field of movement ecology largely benefited from the recent development of new tracking technologies, enhanced computation abilities and powerful data analysis tools. Movement ecology studies have utilized those technological advances to better understand movement processes and predict movement patterns. Such technology-driven era offers new exciting opportunities but also entails significant challenges. In the first part of this presentation, I will summarize the major opportunities and challenges in movement ecology research, illustrated for various birds and bats. I will stress the need to promote a dynamic interplay between advancement of movement research by new tools (the Galisonian approach) and by new ideas (the Kuhnian approach). In the second part, I will illustrate emerging research opportunities to tackle big unanswered questions such as what are the most important scales in an animal’s lifetime? Two long-term movement ecology studies carried out by my group have produced two exceptionally detailed datasets of movements of Griffon Vultures and White Storks, spanning over seven orders of magnitude in both time (seconds to years) and space (meters to ten thousand kilometers). A general multiscale analysis of movement metrics revealed very distinct patterns in both species, and further inspection of identified patterns disclosed behavioral movement motifs indicating the key activities in the lifetime of these soaring birds. In the third concluding part of this talk, I will emphasize the need to reexamine previous dogmas, conceptions and assumptions, the broader scope and greater coverage enabled by current and emerging technologies, the apparent lag in developing new concepts and theories, and the management and analysis of big data, all still await future developments.