Animal movement, behaviour, and biologging session at the 7th WCMB.

25/03/2026

Animal movement, behaviour, and biologging, is one of LifeWatch ERIC’s Thematic Services Working Groups, networks of Common Facilities and Distributed Centres members, coordinated by the Service Centre.

These WGs implement activities, developments, and physical outcomes of the RI’s Thematic Services in 8 key priority areas (with more to come). Among these, animal tracking is the practice of monitoring and studying animal movements and behaviour in their natural environment from a distance, across spatial and temporal scales, using a suit of tools and technologies.

This practice provides as an advantage the possibility to gather robust data over extended temporal periods and regardless of challenging conditions, with minimal environmental disturbance or interference with the animal behaviour. What makes animal tracking a priority area for LifeWatch ERIC, is the fact that it can offer information about the biology and ecology of organisms that is crucial to establish conservation framework and regulations, and to make predictions on the animals adaptation to human activities.

Jan Reubens (Flanders Marine Institute), Coordinator of this WG, is co-convening a session with Pieterjan Verhelst (Research Institute for Nature and Forest) in occasion of the 7th World Conference on Marine Biodiversity (Bruges, Belgium, 17-20 November 2026).

The Animal movement, behaviour, and biologging panel collects works that offer practical examples and insights on tracking fish with acoustic transmitters, following bird migrations with GPS tags, assessing wildlife presence with camera traps, monitoring presence of marine mammals with passive acoustics, and more.

The session (see 7.3 on this page) falls under the scope of Theme 7 of the conference (together with other five ones). The theme, titled Taking the pulse of the ocean: measuring the current marine biodiversity state and how it impacts us, is open to monitoring programs, networks and activities, to share history, progress, status and lessons learnt. Particular attention is given to the impact of these works on the knowledge of the marine environment, and to data interoperability.

Follow the updates on the programme and read more on the 7th WCMB page: https://www.wcmb2026.org/7-Taking-the-pulse-of-the-ocean-measuring-the-current-marine-biodiversity-state-and-how-it-impacts-us.