Drones and Machine Learning as a Complementary Tools in Wildlife Biology Studies

Dear Colleagues,

The use of aerial drones (UAVs) for wildlife monitoring has grown rapidly in the past decade. These drones, equipped with various sensors like high-resolution and thermal cameras, are becoming more affordable and accessible to professionals in wildlife conservation and management as technology improves. Animal monitoring is crucial for understanding behaviour and social dynamics. Ethologists use focal animal sampling to gather detailed data on specific animals, which aid in measuring activity budgets and informing conservation strategies. This method is particularly valuable in studying captive animals, ensuring their ability to exhibit natural behaviours is critical for their welfare and reintroduction success. Observing free-ranging animals presents challenges, such as the loss of visibility and potential disturbances. UAVs offer a solution by enabling less intrusive monitoring over larger areas, including the ability to track nocturnal species with thermal cameras. While videography is commonly used for behavioural observation, it is time-consuming and prone to subjective scoring. Machine learning techniques in video analysis have the potential to automate behavioural tracking, reducing the researchers' workload. However, these methods are still developing and require further exploration.

The goal of this Special Issue is to collect papers (original research articles and review papers) to give insights about the use of drones in wildlife biology studies, with the complementary tool of machine learning techniques, which will allow for species recognition, age, sex and body conditions, speed, behaviour and direction of the movement of the individuals detected during the period of observation.

This Special Issue will welcome manuscripts related to the following themes:

• Use of drones, equipped with various sensors, for the monitoring of wildlife (with the potential automation using machine learning techniques);
• Use of drones in behavioural science (with the potential automation using machine learning techniques);
• Drones as a tool for the estimation of demographic parameters in wild populations;

We look forward to receiving your original research articles and reviews.

Prof. Dr. Cino Pertoldi
Dr. Sussie Pagh
Guest Editors

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• drones
• machine learning
• Yolo
• DeepLabCut
• IR Camera
• artificial intelligence
• behavioural studies