Appendix 1.

Recommendations for features of aerial drones used in plant ecology.

Feature*	Necessary	Desirable
Enough power to carry a camera	Yes	–
High-resolution camera that can be oriented straight down	Yes	–
Flight time greater than 10 min	Probably	Yes
Onboard GPS for hovering in place and flight stabilization	Probably	Yes
Camera capable of adding GPS and altitude metadata to images	Probably	Yes
Camera capable of saving images in raw formats	Probably	Yes
Gimbal with camera stabilization	No	Yes
Mobile app with camera controls and video feed from the drone	No	Yes
Flight information on altitude, speed, and distance from origin	No	Yes
Programmable to fly to multiple GPS waypoints	No	Yes
Automatic homing on low battery and control signal loss	No	Yes
Automatic no-fly zone avoidance and altitude limit	No	Yes
Ground detection for landing assistance	No	Yes
Object proximity detection and avoidance	No	Yes

^*At the time of this publication, the Phantom series from DJI (Phantom 2 Vision+, and Phantom 3 and 4 models; DJI, Shenzen, China) and the Solo micro-UAV from 3D Robotics (Berkeley, California, USA) meet all of the necessary and, depending on the specific model, most of the desirable criteria listed here.