# Arduino allows development of a low-cost, high-resolution metabolic and behavioral phenotyping system for birds

## TL;DR

This paper presents a low-cost, DIY system using Arduino to monitor bird metabolism and behavior over multiple days.

## Contribution

The novel contribution is a live-in respirometry system for birds using Arduino for synchronized metabolic and behavioral data collection.

## Key findings

- The system successfully monitored body weight, food, and water intake in sync with metabolic data.
- Hourly energy expenditure and intake were calculated during cold acclimation in birds.
- All system plans and code are provided as a low-cost alternative to commercial systems.

## Abstract

Technological advancements now enable the use of flow-through respirometry for rapid, high-throughput metabolic phenotyping, but live-in systems currently do not exist for birds. We designed live-in respirometry chambers for small birds with the open-source electronics platform Arduino to continuously monitor bird body weight, food intake and water intake in sync with metabolic data collection. To demonstrate how this system can be implemented, we kept birds in the metabolic phenotypic chambers for 10 days while we progressively lowered the temperature from 25°C to 5°C. We used the data to calculate hourly energy expenditure and food/water intake during acute cold acclimation. We provide all plans and code for the live-in chambers, Arduino biomonitoring system and additional radio-frequency identification (RFID) module as a low-cost, DIY alternative to commercially available systems and to enable the use of standard respirometry equipment for metabolic phenotyping in birds.

Summary: DIY live-in chambers and Arduino electronics allow the use of standard respirometry equipment for high-resolution, multi-day metabolic phenotyping and bio-monitoring of birds.