Services

GPS is the backbone of biologging: It tells us where animals are and when they are there. From fine-scale movements to migrations spanning continents, GPS  anchors all other sensor data in time and space, turning behaviour into movement, and movement into ecology.

© Giacomo dell'Omo

Accelerometers (ACC) bring biologging to life by revealing what animals are actually doing. Fine-scale body movements (combing posture and velocity) translate into behaviours like flying, resting, or feeding, and even into estimates of energy expenditure. By adding activity to the when and where from GPS, ACC uncovers the hidden costs of living in natural and human-dominated landscapes.

© Shane Sumasgutner

Camera traps add eyes to ecological monitoring. We deploy and manage camera systems that capture wildlife behaviour, species interactions, and rare events without human presence, providing valuable information for research, conservation, and environmental management.

© Black Sparrowhawk Project

Ground-truthing is essential for making sense of biologging data. By directly observing animals - or using complementary tools like camera traps - we can link sensor signals to real behaviours and contexts. This validation turns abstract data streams into biological meaning and ensures that patterns in movement, activity, and energetics truly reflect how animals live and interact with their environment.

© Sonia Kleindorfer

Individual marking/ Bird banding is what turns biologging into life-history research. By knowing who carries a tag, we can link movement and behaviour to age, sex, experience, reproduction, and survival across years. This connection allows biologging data to be embedded in an individual’s life story - revealing not just how animals move, but how lives unfold in changing environments.

© Rainhard Thaller

Laboratory and field-based physiological measurements - such as stress hormones, stable isotopes, or blood metabolites - allow us to interpret sensor data in terms of condition or energetics. By validating biologging signals against physiological responses, we can move from describing behaviour to understanding the mechanisms that shape survival and life histories.

© Verena Popp-Hackner

Mortality signals emerge when multiple sensors speak together. A sudden stop in movement, flat-lined accelerometry, temperature changes, or altered GPS patterns ('mortality clusters') can jointly reveal where, when and how an animal dies. By integrating information across sensors, biologging allows us to distinguish true mortality from tag failure and to link death events to individual state, environmental conditions, or human pressures. 

© Ralph Buij

Our conservation detection dog plays an impossible-to-overlook role in our biologging work. “Nala” locates dropped tags and recovers carcasses, allowing us to connect movement data with individual life histories and reduce waste. Recovered tags can be reused, maximising the value of each device while lowering costs and environmental impact. Nala’s work also enables validation of mortality events, assessment of tag performance, and the ethical completion of biologging studies beyond remote data transmission.

© Shane Sumasgutner

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs; drones) provide versatile and efficient tools for wildlife monitoring, ecological research, and conservation management. At the Sumasgutner Lab, we use drone-based technologies to complement traditional field methods and biologging approaches, allowing efficient data collection across large, complex, or otherwise difficult-to-access landscapes. Our applications include (1) nest, colony, and roost monitoring, (2) habitat assessment and land-use mapping, (3) behavioural observations and movement ecology studies, (4) drone-based VHF telemetry, and (5) thermal drone monitoring. These activities are supported through recent collaborations with Wildlife Drones and ROFlight.

© Johannes Ploderer

One of the most widely cited ideas in conservation states that we will only conserve what we know and what we experience. This principle captures the essence of citizen science: people are far more likely to value and protect nature when they have direct experience and understanding of it. Citizen science is therefore much more than data collection - it is a powerful tool for reconnecting people with the natural world. The shared research process fosters awareness, stewardship, and ultimately stronger support for conservation. The Sumasgutner Lab is proud to run one of the first urban raptor–focused citizen science projects: the Turmfalkeprojekt Wien.

© Marc Graf & Christine Sonvilla

Open and reusable data extend individual lives beyond a study system. Well-documented and shared biologging data allow individual life histories to inform future research, conservation, and policy. By following open data practices, we maximise the value of every tagged animal and ensure that biologging generates lasting knowledge. Working with wildlife carries a deep responsibility: we respect every individual life and strive to minimise our impact. Making data findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable is therefore not just good science - It is a core part of our ethical commitment.

© Movebank

Many ecological studies and conservation projects require safe access to nests located on trees, cliffs, buildings or industrial structures. We use rope access techniques to safely reach nesting sites while minimizing disturbance to wildlife. Our team has extensive experience working with raptors, owls, corvids, and other cavity- and platform-nesting species. Services include nest monitoring, ringing and tagging, biological sampling (blood and feacal), camera installation and maintenance, and other nest-based research activities. We also design, install, and evaluate artificial nesting structures for a wide range of species.

© Callan Cohen

Adding the soundscape to the landscape can be challenging, yet it provides an incredibly valuable and often overlooked layer of ecological information. Using passive acoustic recorders and automated sound analysis, we can quantify both biological and anthropogenic soundscapes across space and time. This approach is used to assess noise exposure in our experimental work, as well as to quantify biodiversity patterns in specific microhabitats that are difficult to survey visually.

© Çağlar Akçay