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. 

Fish sound preference may inform migration patterns: here’s an interesting one. Water sounds are thought to be important in triggering upriver migration patterns, so these researchers played some tones and watched how fish reacted. They avoided the 100 Hz tone and were attracted to the 200 Hz tone. Then they fed this into a GIS model and think that they can replicate patterns now–they might even be able to manipulate migration behavior.

Boat presence as important as noise in disrupting foraging patterns in dolphins: these researchers used passive acoustic monitoring to listen to dolphin buzzes during foraging, and found that it was correlated more with boat presence than just noise level.

Fun link of the week: a scientific examination of whether or not a duck’s quack actually does echo (I love scientists because we do this sort of thing in our spare time).