After almost two decades of preparations, a special antenna on board the International Space Station will soon start tracking individual animals from space. This autumn already, NIOO’s Centre for Avian Migration will redo a classic experiment on starlings using the new technology.


ICARUS website

The project's official name is ICARUS: International Cooperation for Animal Research Using Space. It's the brainchild of German zoologist Martin Wikelski, who worked for eighteen years to turn it from science fiction into science fact.

Now in its testing phase - and with reception so far better than anticipated - the project is slated to go live after the summer. From that moment onward, a special antenna on board the ISS will locate animals that have been fitted with miniature trackers.

Size matters

Animal tracking has come a long way, NIOO researcher and head of the Animal Ecology department Marcel Visser tells De Volkskrant. First came metal bird rings, then GPS trackers that "allowed us, for the first time, to follow individual birds for years: where, when, how high, how fast?"

But the first generations of trackers were big, clumsy things that could only be used for geese or storks without being too intrusive. By contrast, the latest trackers used for Project ICARUS weigh no more than 2.3 grams and are smaller than a fingernail. "For many researchers, this opens up a world of possibilities", says Visser.

The next generation is expected to weigh no more than a single gram. But, says Visser, even that would still be too much to track pied flycatchers, a "fascinating" bird that migrates to West-Africa across 5000 kilometres each year and that on average weighs just twelve grams.

Spotting starlings

NIOO’s contribution to ICARUS will focus on another species: starlings. Henk van der Jeugd, head of the Dutch Centre for Avian Migration and Demography (Vogeltrekstation), is planning to re-run a famous translocation experiment carried out by pioneering Dutch biologist Albert Perdeck in the 1950s, in which thousands of starlings were taken from the Netherlands to Switzerland on the eve of their autumn migration and set free.

The hundreds of starlings Van der Jeugd is planning to release in Switzerland this time will be carrying ICARUS' miniature trackers instead of Perdeck's metal rings, and he's hoping to gain new insights into the way in which young starlings learn to navigate.

Other practical applications of the project range from exploring the link between volcanic activity and unusual activity in goats to using sea birds to track climate change in locations over the ocean where there's no measuring equipment. Visser: "This project is an important development that many reseachers have been waiting for."

(Photograph of starlings: Blachswan https://flickr.com/photos/40883175@N06/29100365945)