Research

Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) is a sampling technique that has gained increasing popularity in the field of wildlife monitoring and research. The technique involves the deployment of programmable ARUs, allowing for non-invasive and cost-effective collection of acoustic information across a breadth of temporal and spatial scales.

We have several ongoing projects within the lab testing and comparing ARU performance across hardware models. We additionally have been exploring several approaches for efficiently using BirdNET Analyzer, and how to best optimize BirdNET Analyzer for different targeted uses.

The Key Largo mesopredator project is a collaboration between Southern Illinois University, the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and led by MS Student Kelly Crandall.

The Missouri Swamp Rabbit Project is a collaboration between Southern Illinois University-Carbondale and the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) and is led by M.S. student Kylie Bosch. Not to be confused with the marsh rabbit (S.

The Eastern Whip-poor-will and the Chuck-will’s-widow are two bird species in the Nightjar family most often recognized by their charismatic calls. In the Illinois Wildlife Action Plan, both species were identified as species of high interest for their long-term decline largely due to reductions in their prey populations (mostly moths and beetles) and habitat loss.

The North-Central Illinois Bobcat project is a collaboration between Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, and is lead by a team of PhD students, Ellen Audia and Katie Buckman, across three research groups at SIU.

The southern Illinois bird monitoring project seeks to document the presence/absence of bird species throughout southern Illinois using Autonomous Recording Units (ARUs). During May - July 2022, we deployed sound recording devices at over 150 different locations spanning the 11 southernmost Illinois counties, resulting in over 2 Terabytes (about half a million minutes) of recordings.