UW News has posted a story about how a team led by scientists at the University of Washington and the University of Aberdeen attached tiny “backpack” trackers to hummingbirds in the Colombian Andes to learn more about their movements. As they report in a paper published recently in Ecology and Evolution, the tracking system will aid conservation efforts in this region by revealing the previously hidden movements of hummingbirds and other small animals.

Dr. Alejandro Rico-Guevara, a UW assistant professor of biology and curator of ornithology at the Burke Museum, is co-senior author on the paper. Alyssa Sargent, a UW doctoral student in biology, is a co-author on the paper.

Previously, it was impossible to collect movement data for hummingbirds and other small animals in the region. The team set up an automated radio telemetry grid in the páramo, a high-altitude region in the Andes more than 10,000 feet above sea level. Their technology generates fine-scale resolution and continuous location estimates for individual animals, collecting in millions of data points that provide information on species’ habitat requirements, movement patterns and seasonal occurrence, all of which are critical for developing landscape-level management practices and avoiding local extinctions.

“Hummingbirds might not get the same buzz that bees do when it comes to the ecosystem services they provide, but they’re hugely important pollinators all the same,” said co-author Alyssa Sargent, a UW doctoral student in biology. “If you think about it in practice, it’s very challenging to protect an animal when you don’t know where or how far it moves each day, or what kinds of habitats it prefers. The fact that these questions are still largely unanswered when it comes to hummingbirds means that there remains a lot of important work to be done!”

Read the full article in UW News.