BiodiversiTea – the NFDI4Biodiversity Lecture Series #25

The online format BiodiversiTea offers a forum for presenting and discussing work, projects, tools, and topics from and around the NFDI4Biodiversity community. Once a month, we meet online for an hour – for exciting presentations and lively discussions over a cup of tea (or coffee). The session is open to anyone who would like to find out about and discuss current developments and topics relating to biodiversity data. Membership of NFDI4Biodiversity is not necessary.

Topic in October 2026
An introduction to Movebank and how it connects animal movement to biodiversity

Speaker
Sarah C. Davidson (Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior; University of Konstanz)

Abstract
Researchers and practitioners worldwide collect biodiversity data from animal-borne sensors. Movebank is an online platform hosted by the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior that helps them to collect, manage, share and archive these data.

The platform currently hosts nearly 12 billion species occurrence records, representing movements of 1,700 species, along with billions of other sensor measurements. Users retain control over access to their data, managing projects independently through near-real-time feeds and interactive tools. The platform's published vocabulary and APIs allow users to access data through analysis software, including MoveApps, which offers custom analysis workflows composed of open-source apps.

Movebank also serves as a discovery portal that is leveraged by collaborations around the world to conserve wildlife populations and gain ecological insights through comparative analyses. We are working to connect movement data to biodiversity research and policy through two working groups of the recently launched Animal Behavior Biodiversity Observation Network (Move BON). First, MoveTraits is an open-access behavioral trait database that uses Movebank to grow participation and the breadth of animal behavior represented. Second, in cooperation with the Data Standardization Working Group of the International Bio-Logging Society, we will advance a pipeline to translate publicly archived animal movement datasets to Darwin Core and publish them on GBIF and the new GBIF-hosted Wild Moves portal.

This talk will provide an overview of Movebank, its functions and data, and how it connects to the biodiversity research community.

Further information

• Kays R, Davidson SC, Berger M, Bohrer G, Fiedler W, Flack A, Hirt J, Hahn C, Gauggel D, Russell B, et al. 2022. The Movebank system for studying global animal movement and demography. Methods Ecol Evol. 13(2):419–431. https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.13767

Questions & Feedback
The BiodiversiTea lives from your ideas! Would you like to get feedback, are you looking for collaborators, would you like to present the results of your work or would you like to discuss a topic in a larger group? Write to us at helpdesk@nfdi4biodiversity.org or via our helpdesk form and we will organize one of the upcoming lectures together.

If you have any questions, please send a message to our helpdesk.


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