Noise pollution is becoming (ok, already is) a problem in cities. Traffic, construction, people yelling: you name it, it’s probably noisy. Cities aren’t the only places where humans make noise, though. Even in more rural areas, industrial projects, airports, oilfields, etc. raise quite a racket.
This is pretty stressful for animals, not to mention makes it hard for them to communicate with sound. Some species have been shown to change their behavior to be able to communicate with each other, even with all that human background noise going on.
Today we’re taking a look at how two species of sparrows that live in grasslands respond to industrial noise. This graphic is based on a neat study by the Koper lab at the University of Manitoba, published in Bioacoustics ($): Ability to alter song in two grassland songbirds exposed to simulated anthropogenic noise is not related to pre-existing variability
In case you can’t access the original paper, have a look at coverage of related projects in The Conversation (Industrial noise compels Savannah sparrows to change their tune), and in UMToday (Canadian songbirds forced to change their tunes)!
Infographic PDF version here.
Pineapples and Whales 