The CURE course was recommended to me by one of my close friends who had taken it previously and loved it, and I’m so glad I took her advice! I was super excited to be participating in undergraduate research that was designed and controlled by me - this is not usually the case for undergraduates pursuing research. Out of all the possible projects, from manatees to dolphins to whales, I decided to focus on the curious toadfish.
Previous studies had already been completed on their acoustic communication, but there were still more questions to be answered. My objective was to classify acoustic toadfish “species” based on the appearance of their call, and extract various call information at three different times of day with varying boat traffic. After my hypothesis was developed and my goals were defined, it was time to dive into data collection. While at first it seemed redundant and time-consuming extracting data from 330 audio files, I soon developed an appreciation for the individual toadfish and what they had to say to each other. The end results were very gratifying; I had come to a conclusion that toadfish were producing lower and louder calls in response to boat noise masking. Not only this, but these results made me ask more questions and want to do further research. In the future, I hope to find out if the selection of toadfish calls is causing phenotypic changes as well, as the driver for (hopefully) my master’s thesis!
CURE pushed me to take responsibility and power over what makes me curious, and to dive into that. Despite minor setbacks and issues, I really wanted to make the experiment work and figure out more. At the end of the course, every student got to report and present their research to the class; it was truly incredible to see how passionate and excited people were about what they had researched and how their hard work had come to fruition. I am really grateful I was a part of this experience!
Previous studies had already been completed on their acoustic communication, but there were still more questions to be answered. My objective was to classify acoustic toadfish “species” based on the appearance of their call, and extract various call information at three different times of day with varying boat traffic. After my hypothesis was developed and my goals were defined, it was time to dive into data collection. While at first it seemed redundant and time-consuming extracting data from 330 audio files, I soon developed an appreciation for the individual toadfish and what they had to say to each other. The end results were very gratifying; I had come to a conclusion that toadfish were producing lower and louder calls in response to boat noise masking. Not only this, but these results made me ask more questions and want to do further research. In the future, I hope to find out if the selection of toadfish calls is causing phenotypic changes as well, as the driver for (hopefully) my master’s thesis!
CURE pushed me to take responsibility and power over what makes me curious, and to dive into that. Despite minor setbacks and issues, I really wanted to make the experiment work and figure out more. At the end of the course, every student got to report and present their research to the class; it was truly incredible to see how passionate and excited people were about what they had researched and how their hard work had come to fruition. I am really grateful I was a part of this experience!
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