Research Initiation Award: Testing the Mechanisms Underlying Noise Avoidance by Animals

历史上的黑人学院和大学本科课程（HBCU-UP）研究启动奖（RIA）为HBCU的STEM教师提供支持，以便在他们的家乡机构，NSF资助的中心，研究密集型机构或国家实验室进行研究。RIA项目预计将有助于进一步提高教师的研究能力和有效性，改善他们所在机构的研究和教学，并让本科生参与研究经验。在国家科学基金会的支持下，温斯顿-塞勒姆州立大学（WSSU）寻求通过与博伊西州立大学声景生态学领域的领导者合作来提高生物学家的研究能力。调查员和几个少数民族本科生将从事一项研究项目，研究噪音对野生动物的影响。噪声是自然和人类系统中重要且不断增长的组成部分。人为声音，包括来自交通网络、发电、机动娱乐、城市发展和化石燃料开采的声音，声音巨大且无处不在。偏远的荒野地区也不能幸免，交通噪声是现代声学景观的一个几乎普遍的组成部分，在美国大陆的几乎所有角落和县都有明显的气道、铁路和公路噪声。与此同时，自然声音，如早晨的鸟鸣合唱或山间河流的雷声，可以是几乎所有环境中存在的响亮而突出的环境特征。大量的研究表明，生物体会因噪声而改变行为和分布，但其潜在机制在很大程度上仍然未知。该项目提供的教育和研究经验将有助于WSSU努力扩大野生动物生物学中代表性不足的群体的参与，并帮助学生为研究生院和国家STEM劳动力做好准备。1.重要听觉信息的掩蔽（当信号和噪声声学上重叠时），2）分心，可用处理资源的限制（独立于信号和噪声重叠），和3）噪声厌恶（与应激反应相关）。为了梳理这些假设，研究人员和学生将进行一系列基于实验室的实验，重点是在噪音中觅食的动物的表现和压力。几种蝙蝠和鸟类在狩猎时对声音的依赖程度各不相同，它们将在一个大的飞行室里与猎物竞争。同时，行为将被高速摄像机和心率拍摄下来，心率是感知和压力的一种测量方法，使用无线电标签捕捉。捕食者将被训练来定位猎物发出的声音。在实验过程中，将观察动物在安静对照或两种嘈杂声景条件（每种具有不同的频率分布）下觅食。如果掩蔽是负责避免噪音，那么减少觅食成功应该只发生在噪音与猎物信号重叠。如果分心的基础噪音回避，觅食赤字将是平等的两种噪音条件。然而，如果厌恶解释了噪音回避，心率反应将被观察到，觅食成功率没有下降。了解驱动噪声避免的机制对于感官生态学理论和人为噪声政策的发展至关重要。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The Historically Black Colleges and Universities-Undergraduate Program (HBCU-UP) Research Initiation Awards (RIAs) provide support to STEM faculty at HBCUs to pursue research at their home institution, at an NSF-funded Center, at a research intensive institution or at a national laboratory. The RIA projects are expected to help further the faculty member's research capability and effectiveness, to improve research and teaching at their home institution, and to involve undergraduate students in research experiences. With support from the National Science Foundation, Winston-Salem State University (WSSU) seeks to advance the research capacity of a biologist by developing a collaboration with a leader in the field of soundscape ecology at Boise State University. The investigator and several minority undergraduate students will work on a research project examining the influence of noise on wildlife. Noise is an important and growing component in both natural and human systems. Anthropogenic sounds, including those from transportation networks, power generation, motorized recreation, urban development, and fossil fuel extraction are loud and pervasive. Remote wilderness areas are not immune and transportation noise is a near universal component of the modern acoustical landscape with noticeable levels of airway, railway, and roadway noise reaching nearly all corners and counties in the continental USA. Meanwhile natural sounds, such as a morning birdsong chorus or the thunder of a mountain river, can be loud and prominent environmental features that are present in virtually all environments. A substantial body of work has revealed that organisms change behaviors and distributions due to noise, yet the underlying mechanisms remain largely unknown. The education and research experiences provided by this project will contribute to WSSU's efforts to broaden the participation of underrepresented groups in wildlife biology and also help prepare students for graduate school and the Nation's STEM workforce.Three hypotheses have been proposed to explain noise avoidance by animals: 1) masking of important auditory information (when the signal and noise acoustically overlap), 2) distraction, a limitation of available processing resources (independent of signal and noise overlap), and 3) noise aversion (associated with a stress response). To tease these hypotheses apart, the researcher and students will conduct a series of lab-based experiments focused on performance and stress in animals foraging in noise. Several species of bats and birds that vary in their reliance on sound for hunting will be pitted against prey in a large flight room. Simultaneously, behavior will be filmed with high-speed cameras and heart-rate, a measure of perception and stress, captured using radio tags. Predators will be trained to locate prey-generated sounds. During the experiments the animals will be observed foraging in quiet control or two noisy soundscape conditions (each with different frequency profiles). If masking is responsible for noise avoidance, then a reduction in foraging success should occur only when the noise overlaps with prey signals. If distraction underlies noise avoidance, foraging deficits will be equal for both noise conditions. However, if aversion explains noise avoidance, a heart rate response will be observed with no decline in foraging success. Understanding the mechanisms driving noise avoidance is critical for the development of sensory ecology theory and anthropogenic noise policy.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.