MAMtag Project
Unravelling the social lives of Columbian ground squirrels
The project
The MAMtag project aims at studying the social behavior of mammals in their natural environment in a fully automated way, when direct observations are not always feasible. Beyond the study of social contacts only, the MAMtag system allows establishing social networks based on specific behaviors such as aggressive or affiliative contacts.
MAMtag uses a network of long and short range VHF radio antennas that allow both the synchronization and automated collection of data stored on small devices worn by the animals.
The devices are custom made by Sextant Technology Ltd. and tailored to the study species. They include: (1) a circuit-board with a contact VHF radiofrequency sensor, a 3D-accelerometer and 3D magnetometer, an internal memory, and a light and temperature sensor, and (2) an external 3D molded casing adapted to the species.
Long and short-range beacons placed over the study site allow to ensure synchronization of the animal tags to that of the satellite and provide local information on the animal's whereabouts.
Contacts between animals are automatically recorded redundantly on collars, together with body acceleration, body orientation, body temperature, and environmental light. An external network of short range VHF radio antennas allows for continuous localization of individual collars and synchronisation with GPS time stamp. Coupling 3D accelerometry-magnetometer data with contacts allows the determination of individual behavior during social encounters
Timeline
Jun 2017
Preliminary trials were conducted out in the field to determine adequate device and casing size for Columbian ground squirrels. On the ground measurements allowed to identify requirements of the MamTag radio system tailored specifically to a subAlpine environment.
Jul-Dec 2017
R&D: MamTag system electronic design and configuration.
Jan-Feb 2018
1st prototype of the MamTag system
tested
Mar-Apr 2018
Production of 80 MamTag units, 20 local radio beacons, 2 GPS stations, and 2 command programming remotes ! Final tayloring made on site at the RB Miller Research Facility in the heart of the Canadian Rockies !
Jun 2018
Firmware improvement according to field constraints and 1st deployment on Columbian ground squirrels !
Development of the qPCR method for amplifying ground squirrel telomere length at the IPHC CNRS. Telomere length will provide an integrative downstream measure of individual stress in response to their social and ecological environment.
Dec 2018
Dr Sebastian Sosa joins the team as a post-doctoral fellow, thanks to funding from the University of Strasbourg Institute for advanced sciences. Sebastian's expertise is in social network analyses and modelling. He will be analysing the collar data collected during the 2019 breeding seasons. Welcome Sebastian !
Mar 2019
Start of the 2019 field season and first shooting of the scenes of the documentary "Au coeur du réseau" by Wild Talks productions and its film director Aurélien Prudor.
Apr 2019
The University of Strasbourg Institute for advanced sciences has agreed to co-fund a scientific documentary aimed at documenting the MamTag project and the social lives of ground squirrels to a general audience. Many thanks for their continued support !
May 2019
Final firmware developments and first full large scale deployment of the MamTag system in the field.
To be continued !
The team
The core team
Dr. Vincent A Viblanc (Principal Investigator, IPHC-CNRS, Strasbourg, France) is an evolutionary biologist in CNRS who uses a multi-disciplinary approach to study the social determinants of health in natural environments. His research aims at bridging the gap between proximate and ultimate research in understanding how social environments affect individual physiology and fitness. Vincent has been working for 10 years studying the social behavior of animals and its relationship to animal physiology and health on models ranging from fish, birds to mammals. His work has especially been carried out on colonial ground squirrels and colonial king penguins.
Dr. Dominique Filippi is the founder and Director of Sextant Technology Ltd. an R&D research company based in Wellington, New Zealand. Dominique specializes in developing customized instrument for scientific research in ecology and atmospheric chemistry. Those instruments range from highly specialized loggers used in animal behavioral ecology to Fast Ozone Analyzers used in many Europeans laboratories to measure ozone flux and its impact on crops & forests by the eddy correlation method. He started his carrier as a researcher in the Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement (CNRS, Gif sur Yvette, France) where he was in charge of developping CO2 and Radon222 airborne analyzers for the 6th Integrated Project CarboEurope-IP. In parallel to his business activities, Dominique still participates in research programs in animal ecology and atmospheric chemistry.
Professor F. Stephen Dobson (Auburn University, USA) is an evolutionary biologist with a broad understanding of ecology and genetics at the population level. He is currently an USIAS fellow working at the IPHC and holds a prestigious Gutenberg Chair in Strasbourg. He has a long career of studying the evolutionary biology of behaviours, particularly social behaviours. His work has included ethological studies of mice, research on sexual selection of king penguins in the Southern Antarctic Territories of France and, most recently, on ageing and stress in ground-dwelling squirrels in Canada . He uses model animal systems to study basic properties of social behaviour, kin selection, sexual selection, and evolutionary responses to climate change.
Dr. Sebastian Sosa (IPHC-CNRS, Strasbourg, France) is a behavioral ecologist, and currently USIAS post-doctoral fellow at the IPHC, working on the MamTag project. His research is focused on the study of animal societies and the underlying mechanisms that allow the emergence of specific social structures. Specifically how do individuals interact with each other and how are social constructs shaped to face environmental challenges. He uses multilevel and multi-methodological analyses (social networking and referential statistics) to understand the structural processes in animal societies, the ecological and evolutionary consequences over the structures themselves and their emerging characteristics.
The extended phenotype
Dr. Claire Saraux (IPHC-CNRS, Strasbourg, France) is a quantitative ecologist, whose research is aimed at understanding the evolution of individual life history traits and their consequences on population dynamics. Her work focuses mostly on seabirds and their interrelationships with forage fish stocks that are also under strong pressure from commercial fisheries. Besides, she uses the long-term data collected on Columbian ground squirrels to model the fitness of specific phenotypic traits and understand the consequences of environmental variation (e.g. climate) in shaping their evolution.
Dr. François Criscuolo (IPHC-CNRS, Strasbourg, France) is an ecophysiologist and evolutionary biologist, Director of Research in CNRS. His research aims at understanding how the process of ageing differ between individuals, influencing performance and lifespan, a corner-stone question in evolutionary biology. His main goal is to contribute to a better understanding of the origin of the great diversity of ageing rates, by trying to uncover the evolved mechanisms (i.e. molecular, cellular and physiological) that shape the life-history trade-offs in different environments. He develops an approach at the crossroads between physiology and molecular biology, measuring telomere length to assess ageing rates as an output of individual life-history trade-offs in contrasting environments.
Prof. Rudy Boonstra (University of Toronto, Canada) is a population ecophysiologist and evolutionary biologist whose research aims at understanding the adaptations that animals in real world have in coping with stressful situations, what happens when these adaptations are insufficient (i.e. when chronic natural stressors negatively impact physiology, reproduction, brain organization, and demography through maternal effects), and how rapidly changes in the stress response can evolve. His research targets the impact of stress on population demography; the role of the stress axis in physiological ageing; maternal effects and the impact of chronic stress (high predation risk) to explain long-term demographic change; the evolution of the stress axis; and evolution of adrenal function to deal with ecological pressures.
Jeffrey D Roth is a PhD student (Auburn University) working with FS Dobson and VA Viblanc on the effects of parasites on ground squirrel physiology and fitness. He is an expert field squirreler and has helped with the MAMtag project since the beginning. Jeff is involved in many of the projects carried out by the MAMtag team !
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Pierre Uhlrich is an expert field technician for the IPHC-CNRS. He is specialized in the design and engineering of specific apparatus needed in ecological studies, and in the monitoring of wild and captive animals. He has worked for over 20 years with animals on species as diverse as mammals (macaques, baboons, chimpanzees, hamsters, ground-squirrels), birds (ducks, penguins, tits, finches, oystercatchers), and turtles.
Sandrine Zahn is a research engineer in molecular biology, with a strong background in PCR and qPCR methodology which she specifically adapted at the DEPE for several purposes such as telomere length amplification, gene expression and molecular sexing. She is in charge of the Molecular Biology Laboratory, under the supervision of F Criscuolo. Sandrine is presently managing several innovative methodological projects on ageing measurements, including in Columbian ground squirrels.
Dr. Quentin Schull is an evolutionary biologist and ecophysiologist broadly interested in the energy processes underlying life history trade-offs. His research focuses on the physiological mechanisms involved in energy transfers from cellular to organismal and population scales. He has a keen interest in understanding the evolution of animal ornamentation as potential means of signalling individual quality, and has research projects that range from mitochondrial physiology, stress physiology, energy budget modelling, to ecotoxicology. He works on various species of birds, fish and mammals, and has been instrumental in implementing the first stages of the MAMtag project in the field.
Aurélien Prudor (Wild Talks productions) is a film director, cameraman, ornithologist, and expert field biologist. He has spent over 10 years working in the field on birds and mammals, on field sites around the world as varied as sub-Antarctic islands, the Galapagos, Corsica, Irak, the Scattered Islands, and many others. Aurélien and Vincent are currently working on a scientific documentary about the MAMtag project.
The funding
Contact
For information on the MAMtag project, please fill in the following form
IPHC-DEPE, UMR 7178 CNRS
23 Rue du Loess
67037 Strasbourg Cedex 2
France