Issue 7, November 2008

Identifying Foreign ID Detections

As a result of the growing use of VEMCO equipment, and the fact that it is all fully compatible and interoperable, many researchers are detecting tags that do not belong to their study. We refer to these as foreign IDs.

Often these detections have significant scientific value as they lead to exciting discoveries of animal movement and behavior which researchers never anticipated or expected. Therefore, it is critical that this detection data is provided to the tag owner. VEMCO can make this happen quickly and easily while ensuring that all users' data and tag IDs are kept confidential.

If you believe you have detected foreign IDs, please email the list of foreign IDs to Customer Support and attach the associated receiver log files (.VRL files). Also, please note where your receivers were deployed. We will review these files using our internal analysis tools to ensure the detections are valid and not a case of false detections.

Once the detections are validated, we will query the VEMCO tag database to determine the tag owner. We will inform the tag owner of the foreign ID detections and, if he or she agrees, you will be supplied with contact information so the relevant detection data can be exchanged.

Please be assured that the receiver files you submit will be treated as confidential information.

The proliferation of VEMCO tags and receivers being deployed globally and forming vast networks of arrays provides a common platform allowing for some very interesting cross-project discoveries. Users may want to consider joining one of the many networks of researchers who use VEMCO equipment and are collaborating on projects by leveraging each other's receiver arrays and sharing data. See our article on Researcher Collaboration for more information.