Marshall Harry H, Griffiths David J, Mwanguhya Francis, Businge Robert, Griffiths Amber G F, Kyabulima Solomon, Mwesige Kenneth, Sanderson Jennifer L, Thompson Faye J, Vitikainen Emma I K, Cant Michael A
Centre for Ecology and Conservation, University of Exeter, Penryn Campus, Cornwall, United Kingdom.
Centre for Research in Ecology, Evolution and Behaviour, University of Roehampton, London, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2018 Jan 9;13(1):e0190740. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0190740. eCollection 2018.
Studying ecological and evolutionary processes in the natural world often requires research projects to follow multiple individuals in the wild over many years. These projects have provided significant advances but may also be hampered by needing to accurately and efficiently collect and store multiple streams of the data from multiple individuals concurrently. The increase in the availability and sophistication of portable computers (smartphones and tablets) and the applications that run on them has the potential to address many of these data collection and storage issues. In this paper we describe the challenges faced by one such long-term, individual-based research project: the Banded Mongoose Research Project in Uganda. We describe a system we have developed called Mongoose 2000 that utilises the potential of apps and portable computers to meet these challenges. We discuss the benefits and limitations of employing such a system in a long-term research project. The app and source code for the Mongoose 2000 system are freely available and we detail how it might be used to aid data collection and storage in other long-term individual-based projects.
在自然界中研究生态和进化过程通常需要研究项目在多年时间里追踪野外的多个个体。这些项目取得了重大进展，但也可能因需要同时准确且高效地收集和存储来自多个个体的多类数据而受到阻碍。便携式计算机（智能手机和平板电脑）及其上运行的应用程序在可用性和复杂性方面的提升，有可能解决其中许多数据收集和存储问题。在本文中，我们描述了一个这样的长期、基于个体的研究项目所面临的挑战：乌干达的带状猫鼬研究项目。我们介绍了一个我们开发的名为“猫鼬2000”的系统，该系统利用应用程序和便携式计算机的潜力来应对这些挑战。我们讨论了在长期研究项目中采用这样一个系统的益处和局限性。“猫鼬2000”系统的应用程序和源代码可免费获取，我们详细说明了它可如何用于协助其他长期基于个体的项目进行数据收集和存储。
