An experimental approach to evaluate the potential of drones in terrestrial mammal research: a gregarious ungulate as a study model

SCHROEDER, NATALIA M.; PANEBIANCO, ANTONELLA; GONZALEZ MUSSO, ROMINA; CARMANCHAHI, PABLO

Royal Society Open Science

the Royal Society

Año: 2020 vol. 7

2054-5703

Research on the use of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) inwildlife has made remarkable progress recently. Few studiesto date have experimentally evaluated the effect of UAS onanimals and have usually focused primarily on aquaticfauna. In terrestrial open arid ecosystems, with relativelygood visibility to detect animals but little environmentalnoise, there should be a trade-off between flying the UAS athigh height above ground level (AGL) to limit thedisturbance of animals and flying low enough to maintaincount precision. In addition, body size or social aggregationof species can also affect the ability to detect animals fromthe air and their response to the UAS approach. To addressthis gap, we used a gregarious ungulate, the guanaco (Lamaguanicoe), as a study model. Based on three types ofexperimental flights, we demonstrated that (i) the likelihoodof miscounting guanacos in images increases with UASheight, but only for offspring and (ii) higher height AGL andlower UAS speed reduce disturbance, except for largegroups, which always reacted. Our results call into questionmostly indirect and observational previous evidence thatterrestrial mammals are more tolerant to UAS than otherspecies and highlight the need for experimental and speciesspecificstudies before using UAS methods.