Neglecting to account for the mortality of study animals in ecological research has the potential to lead to biased interpretation of behaviour. Considering the widespread use of acoustic telemetry to track the presence and movements of aquatic animals, if mortality is not appropriately addressed, conservation or management decisions affecting important resources may be distorted. Although mortality can be difficult to identify, it is unclear how frequent mortality is considered or incorporated in acoustic telemetry research, particularly studies relating to the behaviour of tagged animals. The main objective of this review was to characterize if and how mortality was incorporated in recent acoustic telemetry articles published during 2015–2019. For the 640 articles reviewed, criteria used to address mortality were summarized across study and animal types, providing a comprehensive view of ‘mortality consideration’. Also, we discuss the common approaches that have been used in previous studies to incorporate mortality, as well as emerging tools, major concerns, and advice to help guide its inclusion in future work. We found that 50% of ecology/behaviour articles tracking the movements of elasmobranchs, bony fishes, and other aquatic animals did not communicate that mortality was either contemplated, investigated, or integrated into the study. For the studies that did incorporate mortality, 75% identified mortality events equating to an average of ~ 11% of animals tagged in each study. The criteria used to assess mortality varied among study types with horizontal movement, movements between adjacent receiver stations, and direct observation of fate as the most common for ecology/behaviour, mortality/survival, and tagging effects articles, respectively. We conclude that reporting of and methods to assess mortality should be more widespread in acoustic telemetry research, especially since movement ecology is increasingly being used to inform management decisions.

中文翻译：

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活到被证实死亡：解决声学遥测研究中的死亡率

在生态研究中忽视研究动物的死亡率有可能导致对行为的有偏见的解释。考虑到广泛使用声学遥测技术来跟踪水生动物的存在和运动，如果不适当解决死亡率问题，影响重要资源的保护或管理决策可能会被扭曲。虽然死亡率可能难以确定，但尚不清楚在声学遥测研究中考虑或纳入死亡率的频率，特别是与标记动物行为相关的研究。本综述的主要目的是描述 2015-2019 年发表的近期声学遥测文章中是否以及如何纳入死亡率。对于审查的 640 篇文章，用于解决死亡率的标准在研究和动物类型中进行了总结，提供了“死亡率考虑”的综合观点。此外，我们还讨论了先前研究中用于纳入死亡率的常用方法，以及新出现的工具、主要问题和建议，以帮助指导将其纳入未来的工作。我们发现，50% 的生态学/行为学文章跟踪了韧皮科、硬骨鱼类和其他水生动物的运动，并没有说明死亡率是被考虑、调查或整合到研究中的。对于确实包含死亡率的研究，75% 确定的死亡率事件相当于每项研究中平均约 11% 的动物标记。用于评估死亡率的标准因研究类型而异，包括水平移动、相邻接收站之间的移动、和直接观察命运分别是生态学/行为、死亡率/生存和标记效应文章中最常见的。我们得出的结论是，在声学遥测研究中，报告和评估死亡率的方法应该更广泛，特别是因为运动生态学越来越多地被用于为管理决策提供信息。