Understanding and integrating resolution, accuracy and sampling rates of temperature data loggers used in biological and ecological studies

Overview & Synopsis

During the 5 th Workshop about Temperature-Dependent Sex Determination held in the 38 th International Sea Turtles Symposium (16-22 February 2018) in Kobe, Japan, we discussed the uncertainty of temperatures recorded by data logger and their calibration. We report here an extension of this discussion. First, we propose a way to estimate the uncertainty of the average temperature recorded using data loggers considering the accuracy of the data logger (repeatability of measurements), resolution of the data logger (resolution of its indicating device) and period of sampling temperature. Second, a general procedure of calibration is described. Functions to perform the estimates are provided in R package embryo growth freely available.