Hello, and welcome back! I have been for about a week and have been exploring the station and forest. The area is beautiful, the food is great, and I have a lovely view from my lab room! I spent the first few days planning where to put my camera traps and acoustic recorders. I will be placing 15 cameras and 15 recorders (as pairs) in various parts of the forest that are either old growth forest or forest that has regenerated after a period of disturbance. Over the course of 15 days, this equipment will gather data on species occurrence. I want to investigate what areas of the forest support which species interactions. By looking at species occurrence in different areas, I can give probabilities that two species (one predator and one prey) may come into contact and interac (predation). If areas with less vegetation have fewer occurrences of species, then these important species interactions, which support the health of the ecosystem, may not be happening. As deforestation and habitat loss continues in forests across the world, understanding the impacts of human driven changes is crucial when designing conservation strategies.
After vegetation measurements, we installed the camera traps and acoustic recorders. Camera traps work by detecting movement as well as infrared radiation (heat), taking photos of the animal (or sometimes a human by accident, but all photos of humans are anonymously deleted). Acoustic recorders run for 5 minutes at the beggining of every hour to record the sounds of the forest. These techniques are less labor intensive than taking data by hand, however they generate a lot of data. Therefore, I will be using AI software to assist in identifying species in photos and recordings. I will talk more about that in the future. After walking quite a few kilometers in the forest, we finished deploying our equipment for these 15 sites, and now we wait. During our walks in the forest, we saw some pretty cool sites so far! Check back for the first round of results in a couple weeks!
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AuthorI am an ecology PhD student in the Beaudrot Lab at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Archives
November 2023
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