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COVID-19 lockdown allows researchers to quantify the effects of human activity on wildlife

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 4, pages 1156–1159 (2020)Cite this article

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Reduced human mobility during the pandemic will reveal critical aspects of our impact on animals, providing important guidance on how best to share space on this crowded planet.

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Fig. 1: Illustrating the research potential of the recently launched COVID-19 Bio-Logging Initiative.

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Acknowledgements

Manuscript preparation was supported through: a Radcliffe Fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University (to C.R.); the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 798091 (to M.-C.L.); and Autonomous Province of Trento ordinary funds to Fondazione Edmund Mach (to F.C.).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Biological Diversity, School of Biology, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK

    Christian Rutz

  2. Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Christian Rutz

  3. Department of Migration, Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, Radolfzell, Germany

    Matthias-Claudio Loretto, Sarah C. Davidson & Martin Wikelski

  4. Department of Biology, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany

    Matthias-Claudio Loretto

  5. Department of Ocean Sciences, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada

    Amanda E. Bates

  6. Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany

    Sarah C. Davidson & Martin Wikelski

  7. Red Sea Research Center and Computational Biosciences Research Center, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

    Carlos M. Duarte

  8. Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Walter Jetz

  9. Center for Biodiversity and Global Change, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Walter Jetz

  10. Sea Mammal Research Unit, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK

    Mark Johnson

  11. Department of Biology, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

    Mark Johnson

  12. Centre d’Etudes Biologiques de Chizé, La Rochelle Université − CNRS, UMR 7372, Villiers en Bois, France

    Akiko Kato & Yan Ropert-Coudert

  13. North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, Biodiversity Lab, Raleigh, NC, USA

    Roland Kays

  14. Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology Program, College of Natural Resources, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA

    Roland Kays

  15. Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre, Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung, Frankfurt (Main), Germany

    Thomas Mueller

  16. Department of Biological Sciences, Goethe University, Frankfurt (Main), Germany

    Thomas Mueller

  17. Biology Department, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA

    Richard B. Primack

  18. Department of Environmental Science, Institute for Water and Wetland Research, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Marlee A. Tucker

  19. Department of Biodiversity and Molecular Ecology, Research and Innovation Centre, Fondazione Edmund Mach, Trento, Italy

    Francesca Cagnacci

Authors
  1. Christian Rutz
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  2. Matthias-Claudio Loretto
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  4. Sarah C. Davidson
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  8. Akiko Kato
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  10. Thomas Mueller
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  14. Martin Wikelski
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  15. Francesca Cagnacci
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Contributions

The idea for this Comment was conceived by the COVID-19 Bio-Logging Initiative. C.R., M.-C.L. and F.C. initiated and coordinated manuscript preparation; C.R. drafted the manuscript with contributions from M.-C.L. and F.C.; M.-C.L. prepared the figure; S.C.D. extracted bio-logging data from Movebank; and all authors provided critical feedback on a draft. Apart from the three lead authors (C.R., M.-C.L. and F.C.), all co-authors are listed alphabetically.

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Correspondence to Christian Rutz.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Rutz, C., Loretto, MC., Bates, A.E. et al. COVID-19 lockdown allows researchers to quantify the effects of human activity on wildlife. Nat Ecol Evol 4, 1156–1159 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-020-1237-z

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