Professor/Students Study Frog Vocalizations at Indian Fort

When you visit one of the Conservancy’s nature preserves, what do you hear? And what can you learn from those sounds, or the silence?

Dr. Kristi Hannam and her research students are listening, and learning. If you look closely when visiting the ponds at the Indian Fort Nature Preserve or the Island Preserve, you might notice a small waterproof container housing an audio recorder that records the frogs and birds at the ponds for a couple of minutes each hour in the evening and overnight.

Dr. Hannam and her students are interested in using the recordings to monitor which species are using the ponds and what their cycles of calling activity are. They are comparing the results to recordings taken at other sites, including a few ponds along I-390. In May, recordings reveal Wood Frogs, Spring Peepers, Green Frogs and Bullfrogs all call at the Conservancy sites, but Grey Treefrogs and Green Frogs are absent from ponds along I-390.

Are Conservancy ponds offering higher quality habitats to Grey Treefrogs and Green Frogs? Are frogs in ponds along I-390 changing their breeding or calling behavior because of the high level of traffic noise? These are some of the questions Dr. Hannam and her students hope to anwser.