Danielle, Author at Animal Bioacoustics

About Danielle

I'm the ORCAA Lab's resident "Frog Lady". As a graduate student in the Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society in the College of Forestry, I study the impacts of road noise on calling behavior in Pacific chorus frogs. Previously, I worked for Chris Clark on right whale communication at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, so I have some marine mammal cred. In my spare time I tend to do outside things, like mountain biking or climbing with my boyfriend. I also like to paint and draw, albeit not very well...

Soundbites is a weekly (biweekly, occasionally) feature of the coolest, newest bioacoustics, soundscape, and acoustic research, in bite-size form. Plus other cool stuff having to do with sound. Welcome to November, everyone! Fall is definitely here! I promise I’ll have a proper ASA post up soon, but in the meantime here are your Soundbites for the week!

Cruise ships may be having an impact in developing tourist markets: the good thing about ecotourism is that you’re not openly depleting resources the way you used to be. The bad thing about ecotourism is that increased exposure can degrade the environment. Places like the Eastern Mediterranean and the Adriatic are facing increased noise levels because of increasing tourism.

Microclimate affects frog calls: abiotic noise like streams and waterfalls can have as much of an impact on vocalizing animals as anthropogenic noise. Here the researchers wanted to know if frogs in different microclimates (near stream, far from stream) were changing their call frequency to overcome stream noise, and they were!

Fun link of the week this week comes from Holger and Radiolab–the story of a vest that helps deaf people hear.

Soundbites is a weekly (biweekly, occasionally) feature of the coolest, newest bioacoustics, soundscape, and acoustic research, in bite-size form. Plus other cool stuff having to do with sound. I’ve been doing really well on this weekly thing, but I might break my streak next week as I’ll be in Indianapolis for ASA(!). That just means you’ll get a real blog post from me next week!

Aposematism led to increased vocal diversity in poison frogs: tip o’ the finder hat to my Garcia labmate Lindsey for this one, and it’s brilliant. You know those little brightly colored poisonous frogs? These authors wanted to know if aposematism (displaying bright colors like that as a warning to predators) might lead to increased vocal diversity, since they’d have to worry less about predation. And it did! In conjunction with sexual selection, aposematism allowed the evolution of a broader vocal repertoire!

Silvereyes shift their frequency down in urban noise–and it works: These are silvereyes. Silvereye birds They’re really cute. You can find them in Australia and New Zealand (which is where I took this photo). Most animals shift their frequencies up above urban noise, but it turns out silvereyes shift theirs down. This increased the predicted effective space of their alarm call 20%!

Fun link of the week: Robert Krulwich of Radiolab wonders about singing bats!

Soundbites is a weekly (biweekly, occasionally) feature of the coolest, newest bioacoustics, soundscape, and acoustic research, in bite-size form. Plus other cool stuff having to do with sound.

High-frequency vessel noise may have an effect on marine mammals in shallow water: much of the anthropogenic noise that we’re concerned with at ORCAA, whether it’s road or vessel noise, is low-frequency because of the attenuation of higher frequencies. However, in shallow water, the high frequencies may not attenuate as much and may therefore cause masking for higher-pitched odontocetes.

Direct-developing frogs are more reliant on climate cues to start calling: what a week, we get one whale link and one frog link! There are some species of entirely terrestrial frogs that don’t go through a tadpole stage; instead, they hatch as mini adults. However, the eggs still need to be kept moist while they’re developing. These researchers found that the onset of calling was more closely tied to high humidity and rainfall than it was to overall air temperature, which is a different cue than most species of tadpole-metamorphosing frogs.

Fun link of the week: I’ve been practicing for my presentation at ASA in a couple of weeks, so I’ve been asking myself this question regularly: “does my voice really sound like that?” Here Greg Foot examines why our voices sound different on recordings.

Soundbites is a weekly (biweekly, occasionally) feature of the coolest, newest bioacoustics, soundscape, and acoustic research, in bite-size form. Plus other cool stuff having to do with sound.

Proximity to wind turbines reduces brood parasitism: this is fascinating. These researchers looked at nest success in relation to proximity to wind turbines, and only found a difference for one species, the blue gnat-catcher. It turns out that nests closer to wind turbines had less of a chance of being parasitized by brown cowbirds. This presents an interesting dichotomy between managing for wind turbines and managing brood parasitism.

Invertebrates may also be impacted by anthropogenic noise: we at ORCAA work entirely on vertebrates, but these authors make an excellent point that invertebrate species have the ability to hear anthropogenic noise. As they are a huge part of food webs in all ecosystems, neglecting to study their response to noise is neglecting a huge part of the systems we study.

Fun link of the week: the loudest sound in recorded human history was heard 3000 miles away. 3000 miles. That is one loud volcano.

Soundbites is a weekly (biweekly, occasionally) feature of the coolest, newest bioacoustics, soundscape, and acoustic research, in bite-size form. Plus other cool stuff having to do with sound. Well, Soundbiters (your new collective noun), term has officially started and the ORCAA students are off and running.

Automated frog call detection–it WORKS! Oh man guys, this is so cool. These researchers developed an automated system for frog identification by call, and it worked even on species they didn’t train the detector on! Talk about huge implications for more efficient monitoring in remote areas!

Cichlids aren’t impacted by boat noise playback: we talk a lot at ORCAA about the negative impacts of anthropogenic noise, so occasionally it’s refreshing to see a species that isn’t impacted in our ever noisier world. Development of this species of cichlid fish was not impacted by playback of boat noise.

Fun link of the week: to be totally honest this has very little to do with sound except that an explosion is involved (just a small explosion, I promise). It’s the first day of October and that means PUMPKINS!! You can make a self-carving pumpkin with calcium carbide and hydrogen peroxide! I would totally try this this Halloween except I’m spending the week prior in Indianapolis for ASA.

Soundbites is a weekly (biweekly, occasionally) feature of the coolest, newest bioacoustics, soundscape, and acoustic research, in bite-size form. Plus other cool stuff having to do with sound. It’s officially the last Soundbites before the fall term at OSU begins!

Light and noise pollution from urban developments may affect ecosystems: the authors did a literature review on studies done on the impacts of light and noise pollution across Australia, and found some glaring and disconcerting gaps in the research. They highlight several effects from light and noise pollution, including stress, changes in foraging, increased predation risk, and reduced reproductive success. They propose that more careful city planning could mitigate the impacts.

Cuttlefish change visual signals in presence of high noise levels: I’m a sucker for cephalopods, and this study is great. Cuttlefish aren’t acoustic animals; in fact, they use complex visual signals to communicate. However, in the presence of anthropogenic noise playback, they changed their color more often than in the absence of noise. This suggests that anthropogenic noise can affect behavior across modalities, and can have an impact on non-acoustic species. Very cool.

Fun link of the week: it’s the first day of school for OSU students on Monday! And granted, as graduate students, that doesn’t really mean much for most of us in ORCAA, since the work doesn’t stop with the end of term. But trust NPR to deliver when I type “sounds of back to school” into Google.

Soundbites is a weekly (biweekly, occasionally) feature of the coolest, newest bioacoustics, soundscape, and acoustic research, in bite-size form. Plus other cool stuff having to do with sound.

Frequency and amplitude can be used to identify individual wild wolves: these researchers developed a code that was able to identify captive Eastern wolves by their howls. Naturally, they wanted to see if it was possible to do a similar identification on wild wolves, and lo and behold, it worked! They used both frequency and amplitude to identify wolves; the use of amplitude is especially interesting. This has really great implications for use of acoustic monitoring in wolf surveys.

Social mole rats have more complex vocal repertoire than solitary mole rats: did you know mole rats had vocal repertoires? I didn’t. There are social species and solitary species, and here the idea is that sociality necessitates a more complex vocal repertoire than solitary life. Interesting implications for communication across lots of social species.

Signs of stress found in vocalizations of translocated elephants: an elephant herd got translocated, and their vocalizations showed that they were a little stressed out by that. They got higher-pitched, which is an indicator of stress.

Fun link of the week: The Times gets a bout of nostalgia and fills its newsroom with the sounds of typewriters. Maybe it’ll make their reporters more productive…or just infinitely more annoyed.

Soundbites is a weekly (biweekly, occasionally) feature of the coolest, newest bioacoustics, soundscape, and acoustic research, in bite-size form. Plus other cool stuff having to do with sound. Can you believe it’s September already? I can’t! This is a frog-heavy post because a lot of interesting frog stuff has been coming out lately; my apologies to marine mammal fans.

Multimodality as a frog coping mechanism for traffic noise: what’s multimodality, you ask? Multimodality refers to communicating in more than one sensory mode; in this case, using both vocalizations and visual cues to communicate with potential mates. While these authors found that switching sensory modalities wasn’t the case for European tree frogs, they do say that this may happen in other species (like the tungara frog I mentioned in my post about the Frog Communication Symposium).

Traffic noise causes stress in frogs: this is VERY cool. Traffic noise playback causes physiological signs of stress in the form of increased corticosteroids in female wood frogs, who use the chorus of male frogs to orient toward the breeding pond. Not only is there stress, but they tend to freeze up and not move, which may impede breeding migration. This may be because the stress hormone is causing an immobility response, or because they can’t figure out where the chorus is due to masking.

Fun link of the week: you know how usually I post a pop press article or a video here? Well this week, it’s a third paper. It’s a paper on coffee roasting acoustics. Apparently it might be helpful for coffee roasters to listen to their beans cracking. I don’t drink coffee, but many of the ORCAA do (Holger especially!), so this seems like a great way of combining two of the lab’s loves!

Soundbites is a weekly (biweekly, occasionally) feature of the coolest, newest bioacoustics, soundscape, and acoustic research, in bite-size form. Plus other cool stuff having to do with sound.

Jackass penguins have quite the vocal repertoire: this is from a little while ago, but still really cool. The link is a great pop-press writeup of this paper recently published in PLOS ONE. Adult birds have vocalizations for four separate situations, and chicks have two different calls. Vocal animals are constantly surprising us with how much they can say…

Soundscapes can be used to monitor biodiversity: but with some caveats, figuring out how to get beyond anthropogenic noise among them. Still, once the hiccups get figured out, this has a lot of potential to rapidly assess biodiversity.

Seahorses produce different sounds based on context: I totally did not know that seahorses make sounds, let alone that they have distinct sounds for courtship and aggression. Very cool.

Fun link of the week: Radiolab tries to say hello to dolphins. Are you listening to Radiolab yet? You should be.

Soundbites is a (hopefully) weekly feature of the coolest, newest bioacoustics, soundscape, and acoustic research, in bite-size form. Plus other cool stuff having to do with sound. Because I’ve been traveling, it’s taken a short hiatus, but that only means I’ve got even more awesome research to share!

Spring peepers change their calls in response to noise: I’ll get this one out of the way first because it’s relevant to my research. A congeneric of my study species is showing vocal plasticity! This is awesome! However, the lab that did this didn’t use anthropogenic noise, but focused on chorus frequency bands. Still, exciting stuff in the world of frog communication!

Anthropogenic noise affects development of embryonic sea hares: sea hares are marine invertebrates kind of like sea cucumbers. This study shows that with playback of anthropogenic noise, they develop less successfully and mortality is increased. It just goes to show that even non-acoustic species are affected by noisy situations.

Icebergs are NOISY, man: here at ORCAA we talk a lot about the biotic and anthropogenic additions to the soundscape, but we can’t neglect the abiotic additions from things like icebergs. Also, this has to do with Antarctica and Michelle is going there in a few months, so I had to post it! The breakup of substantial icebergs is enough to increase ocean noise levels in mid-to-equatorial regions (really far away) for a year and a half. Dang.

Anthropogenic noise causes different anti-predator responses in two sympatric fish: I wasn’t going to post this one, but then I saw that they were testing the response to a visual cue and that was what had changed and it got me thinking. It seems that the fish that changed its response (the stickleback) is made considerably more vigilant by the presence of noise and therefore responds more quickly, while the minnow doesn’t respond at all. Since the fish are preyed upon by the same predators, this has some interesting community-wide implications. Very cool stuff.

Fun Link of the Week: hey everyone, it’s Shark Week! But unfortunately certain channels seem to have forsaken scientific information on sharks in favor of increasing their ratings. So here’s a reputable source of shark information talking about sharks making sounds (spoiler alert: they don’t, really)! If you want more awesome shark science that is grounded in fact, take a look at this YouTube playlist here.

I’ll be back in Corvallis next week, and Soundbites will resume its sort-of-normal schedule!

Animal Bioacoustics

Technology. Ecology. Noise

Author Archives: Danielle

About Danielle

Soundbites for the week of Nov 3 – 7

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Soundbites for the week of Sept. 29 – Oct. 3

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Soundbites for the week of August 11-15

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