After taking the CURE course this spring semester, I am definitely more confident in my research skills than I ever have been. Even though our projects were being completed in the midst of a pandemic when online classes were the only option, this course and my project were extremely adaptable to the new online format. Professor May-Collado is an incredibly caring and knowledgeable researcher that was always available for project help and advice. She also really lets her students explore avenues on their own if that meets their interests. I would highly recommend this course!
My project was on fish sound acoustic diversity in a biological reserve off the coast of a group of islands near Costa Rica. My original goal was to create a database of fish sounds that linked each sound I heard in the recordings to its species or family. However, as I delved deeper into the project, Professor May-Collado and I decided to look into the temporal changes in fish call diversity as the time of day and the time of year progressed. I really enjoyed being able to slowly but surely recognize sounds that came up regularly and hearing the overall diversity of calls that fish can produce. I got to hear everything from long, low ribbit-like sounds to harsh grunts to soft, dainty clicks, and that would only be in one minute of one minute out of a day of recordings!
Once I categorized each sound, I counted up the number of times each sound appeared over my study period and noted when it occurred. I was really doubtful that my analysis would show any significant differences, since scrolling through the data didn’t reveal any immediate, obvious trends. The data analysis part of this project was the most rewarding, however, because I got to see exactly how different times of day or the season affected the types of fish calls. The results were startlingly different and I was excited to see how much change there was!
Presenting at the Student Research Conference, even though it was online, was still one of the highlights of my semester. It was awesome to read other people’s posters and to see what else everyone had studied. I am excited to see what the next semester of students discovers!
Thanks for a great semester!
My project was on fish sound acoustic diversity in a biological reserve off the coast of a group of islands near Costa Rica. My original goal was to create a database of fish sounds that linked each sound I heard in the recordings to its species or family. However, as I delved deeper into the project, Professor May-Collado and I decided to look into the temporal changes in fish call diversity as the time of day and the time of year progressed. I really enjoyed being able to slowly but surely recognize sounds that came up regularly and hearing the overall diversity of calls that fish can produce. I got to hear everything from long, low ribbit-like sounds to harsh grunts to soft, dainty clicks, and that would only be in one minute of one minute out of a day of recordings!
Once I categorized each sound, I counted up the number of times each sound appeared over my study period and noted when it occurred. I was really doubtful that my analysis would show any significant differences, since scrolling through the data didn’t reveal any immediate, obvious trends. The data analysis part of this project was the most rewarding, however, because I got to see exactly how different times of day or the season affected the types of fish calls. The results were startlingly different and I was excited to see how much change there was!
Presenting at the Student Research Conference, even though it was online, was still one of the highlights of my semester. It was awesome to read other people’s posters and to see what else everyone had studied. I am excited to see what the next semester of students discovers!
Thanks for a great semester!
 Acoustic fish species based manual identification of temporal and spectrogram characteristics |  Poster presented at the Student Research Conference Spring 2020 |
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