Distinguishing technology from biology: a critical review of the use of GPS telemetry data in ecology

Hebblewhite and Haydon offered a candid appraisal of whether the flood of GPS telemetry data had actually advanced ecological understanding or merely generated description. They reviewed how technological artefacts, including fix-rate bias, location error, and habitat-induced failures, could masquerade as biological pattern, and they urged researchers to confront these issues explicitly. The paper distinguished questions that genuinely required dense GPS data from those answerable with simpler approaches, and it championed mechanistic, hypothesis-driven analysis over data dredging. For carnivore movement studies, where collars are expensive and sample sizes small, the critique was especially pointed. It remains a standard reference for designing telemetry studies that yield biological insight rather than just maps of dots.