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ALBANY -- The November issue of National Geographic magazine reports on the work of a New York State Museum scientist who has been testing groundbreaking new animal-tracking technology that opens up dramatic new opportunities for studying interactions between mammals and other species.

Roland Kays, the State Museum’s curator of mammals, has been testing the Automated Radio Telemetry System (ARTS) in Panama, along with Martin Wikelski of Princeton University. Their findings are reported in a 12-page full-color photo spread in National Geographic and also appear on the magazine’s website.

Kays and Wikelski have been studying the interactions between the ocelots of Panama’s Barro Colorado Island (BCI) and the agouti, a seven-pound rodent that is the ocelot’s favorite prey.

With funding from the National Science Foundation and the Levinson Family Foundation, the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute installed the system on BCI, where it has operated a research station for 82 years.

ARTS consists of seven permanent radio towers positioned across the island that pick up and relay signals to computers that constantly monitor dozens of animals. With traditional wildlife radio telemetry, several researchers must move around with receivers to determine the position of an animal that had been previously trapped and collared with a receiver. Researchers have also used Global Positioning Systems but satellite signals can be blocked where there is dense cover, such as in rain forests. Also, many animals are too small to carry the tracking equipment needed.

Kays says the new technology, which he hopes to begin testing in the Albany area this fall or winter, allows researchers to “gather more data in one week than in years of traditional telemetry.”

Researchers can scan the computer to check the daily activities of the animals they are studying, and check computer graphics to learn when they are active. ARTS constantly maps the locations of the ocelots and other animals and this becomes especially important because it allows researchers to be on the scene quickly in the rare instance when two collared animals meet and interact.

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“Rarely, will you see a predator kill its prey,” says Kays. This technology allows researchers to be on the scene quickly enough to study rare but important events that would have escaped them in the past.

Kays also has been using the new technology to track the seeds of trees that are at least walnut sized. He has tracked palm tree seeds that agutes bury and then dig up and move. His studies indicate that in some instances the seeds are moved much farther than traditional methods would have tracked them.

Kays hopes to start testing the new technology in Albany’s Pine Bush, using the design set up in Panama. He will check to see how the equipment operates in a more populated area where there could be radio interference from other sources. He expects his first study subjects will be squirrels and mice.

The National Science Foundation will be looking at the local studies closely to determine the future potential for deploying the new technology across the country.

As the State Museum’s curator of mammals, Kays studies the distribution and taxonomy of carnivores in Albany’s Pine Bush and the Adirondacks. He also curated an exhibition at the Museum, open through January 29th -- Mammals Revealed: Discovery and Documentation of Secretive Creatures. The exhibition shows how artists transformed scientific information into detailed works of art appearing in the field guide, Mammals of North America by Dr. Kays and Don E. Wilson, curator of mammals at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History.

An Albany resident, Kays received his undergraduate degree in biology at Cornell University before earning his doctorate in zoology at the University of Tennessee studying rain forest carnivores in Panama.

Further information and a video on Kay’s research in Panama can be found at
http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0511/feature4/index.html.

The New York State Museum is a program of the New York State Department of

Education, the University of the State of New York and the Office of Cultural Education.

Started in 1836, the museum has the longest continuously operating state natural history research and collection survey in the United States. The State Museum is located on Madison Avenue in Albany. It is open daily from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. except on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day. Admission is free. Further information about programs and events can be obtained by calling (518) 474-5877 or visiting the museum website at www.nysm.nysed.gov.

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