Another interesting fusion of technology and field biology: cybertracker, a program which allows users to note observations about plants or animals on a GPS-empowered handheld, and then merge those observations into a larger map of how habitat is changing or animals are migrating. As this article puts it:

"NORDHOEK, South Africa -- Sitting at his laptop computer, Louis Liebenberg compares two maps of the same area: While the first is plotted thickly with yellow dots, the yellow areas on the second map are far sparser.

"These dots represent sightings of lowland gorillas recorded by trackers both before and after an outbreak of the Ebola virus in the Lossi Sanctuary in the Republic of Congo. Using CyberTracker... the trackers were able to gather data that revealed in detail the decimation of the local gorilla population. Initially skeptical, scientists later confirmed their findings that the virus is killing gorillas and other animals, and published an article that appeared recently in the journal Science.

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