Once upon a time, scientists studied individual plants and animals. Their mania for collecting specimens shows what they thought was important. More recently, the mania has been for studying the interaction in an ecosystem. But while sounds of individual species have been collected, the idea of studying the ecology of sound is relatively new.

In his research into what he calls “soundscape ecology,” Bryan C. Pijanowski of Purdue University has discovered, for example, that animals divide up the soundscape, each creating sound in one part of the spectrum. Find a pile of information about soundscape ecology on the Purdue Human-Environment Modeling and Analysis Laboratory, here.


There are lots of links on the site, including one to a BioScience article and coverage of the research on National Public Radio.

You may already be using or collecting sounds in your research, and checking out these resources might help you discover a new dimension to studying wildlife sounds.