Wildlife photography as a tool in zoology

At the turn of the century, wildlife photography has increased its range of impact and popular reach to levels that had not been previously acceptable. While in the 70s and 80s of the last century, only professionals and advanced amateurs had the necessary equipment and skill to record decent information about the animals they had encounters, today these possibilities are available to a much wider audience.
Wildlife photography itself has added values far beyond exhibition and aesthetics. It is information and data in a visual format. This includes information that can be transmitted and replicated, in this case, in the context of zoology and natural history. This is solidly recognized by the scientific community and is a fact referenced in different academic publications.

Perhaps one of the most recognized values is the very value that wildlife photography has as a conservation tool, and this is divided into two senses.
On the one hand, good photographs taken of wild specimens represent a real visual reference that can reach a large audience beyond those who already know these species. They become icons of the species portrayed and a record of their existence, going in this case from the specific level to the individual level. The photographic image acts as a window through which the public looks at the existence and life of animals. At this point you can remember that quote of “you can't protect or preserve what you don't know”. And quality images of species diversity allow the most diverse public to know them even from a distance, since otherwise they would be totally unknown to them. At this point, the person may feel empathy or interest in the animal being photographed and thus worry about its condition and conservation (Springer, 2012).

On the other hand, with the rise of private photography and greater access to photographic equipment, wildlife photography has become popular on an enormous level. Nature tourism, focused at its highest level on the photography of wild individuals, has experienced enormous development as an industry. And the fact that the animals photographed become an economic engine allows them and their habitats to be preserved not only because of their level of natural heritage, but also because of the additional economic value they provide. This in turn allows part of these generated resources to be used to invest in conservation in a larger outdoor area. In this sense, wildlife photography is a conservation tool (Lindsey et al., 2005).

In a functional aspect, there is the information that the images collect, the image itself as a tool. Even in our own field work, photography is a tool that we use every day. On the one hand, it has a registration function and verifies the presence of the species that are being studied. On the other hand, images are evidence of behaviors in certain environments and ecological situations. With new technologies, the raw image (called RAW format) allows access to the original information captured by the camera sensor and many of these cameras today include a GPS option to geolocate the image at the time of taking it. Again, this is a form of data authentication. We are used to using phototrapping cameras as material for use in inventory and registration methodologies, as is the case with cameras for individual use.

Science has used photography as a tool and methodology for recognition at the individual level in different animal species subject to study. In species whose biology and morphology allow individual monitoring and recognition, photography can serve as a kind of diary of the animal's life based on all the documented encounters. This type of photographic recording and tracking has been widely used with large mammals: (Cheeseman et al., 2021; Katona et al., 1979; Maddock & Mills 1994).

In our own work, this type of documentation is useful for animals that, for reasons of territoriality or demography, are individually unique. It is even the case of animals that have some mark or difference in relation to other individuals of their species. As an example, in environmental inventory work, a specimen of an Iberian imperial eagle could be registered (Aquila adalberti) recognizable by a pathology in one of their feet. All the photographs taken of this individual not only allow him to be located or recognized afterwards after the processing of images at a very long distance, they also allow the recording of his activity and behavior.

In addition, in animals with some type of marking such as ringing or labeling, if the photograph allows the identification of the marking, this allows their presence to be recorded by means of a photograph to later recognize them individually using the marking legend or the corresponding database. Taken to a broader term, the citizen contribution of those photographers with their own capacity for faunal knowledge and photographic skills has also proved to be a source of information for work in conservation biology applied to wildlife (Marnewick et al., 2014).

Even thanks to high-quality photography, it has been possible to define species in those cases in which a physical type specimen was lacking, as in the case of the dipteran Marleyimyia xylocopae (Marshall & Evenhuis, 2015; Pape 2016).

Finally, we cannot forget the following conclusion: The high quality of the photograph provides high credibility to the published material (Husain et al., 2017). And in this final appointment we are not going to talk about the quality of the image as if this were a contest photo, but about the final information that we can transmit with it.

References:

Cheeseman, T., Southerland, K., Park, J., Oil, M., Flynn, K., Calambokidis, J.,... & Clapham, P. (2021). Advanced image recognition: a fully automated, high-accuracy photo-identification matching system for humpback whales. Mammalian Biology, 1-15

Katona, S., Baxter, B., Brazier, O., Kraus, S., Perkins, J., & Whitehead, H. (1979). Identification of humpback whales by fluke photographs. In Behavior of marine animals (pp. 33-44)

Husain, N., Roy, P., & Trak, T.H. 2017. Photography as a conservation tool in science. Trends in Biosciences, 10 (46), 9317-21.

Lindsey, P.A., Alexander, R.R., Du Toit, J.T., & Mills, M.G.L. (2005). The potential contribution of ecotourism to African wild dog Lycaon pictus conservation in South Africa. Biological Conservation, 123(3), 339-348.

Maddock, A. & Mills, M.G.J. (1994) Population characteristics of African wild dogsLycaon pictus in the Eastern Transvaal lowveld, South Africa, as revealed through photographic records. Bill Conserv 67:57—62

Marnewick, K., Ferreira, S.M., Grange, S., Watermeyer, J., Maputla, N., & Davies-Mostert, H.T. (2014). Evaluating the status of and African wild dogs Lycaon pictus and cheetahs Acinonyx jubatus through tourist-based photographic surveys in the Kruger National Park. PLoS One, 9(1), and 86265.

Marshall, S.A., & Evenhuis, N.L. (2015). New species without dead bodies: a case for photo-based descriptions, illustrated by a striking new species of Marleyimyia Hesse (Diptera, Bombyliidae) from South Africa. ZooKeys, (525), 117.

Pape, T. 2016. Species can be named from photos. Nature, 537 (7620), 307-307.

Springer, C. 2012. Watch the birdie: Imagemaking and wildlife conservation. Explorations in Media Ecology, 10.1-2, 7-23

Marco Ansón, Biodiversity