Research, conducted by The University of Warwick and the University of New South Wales in Australia, analyzes animal sounds from endangered species including types of elephants, whales and birds.

It uses a new method adapted from tech used to analyze brain waves in neuroscience. The study is published in the journal Ecology and Evolution.

Analysis of animal sounds can be used to estimate their population size, to identify what animals live in a particular area, to understand their migration patterns, and to understand any negative impacts they may experience due to the increasing levels of noise created by human activity that are occurring in most of their habitats. Such insights are vital in developing environmental management and conservation strategies.

The new method was shown to be more accurate than the conventional methods for analysis of animal sounds. While testing this new method, called the Superlet transform, the study also revealed some previously unreported or disputed details in animal sounds:

• The Asian elephant call isn’t just made up of continuous tones, but also contains sounds that are “pulsed,” or comprised of regularly timed bursts of sound energy.
• Pulsing was also shown in the southern cassowary (a large bird similar to an emu) and American crocodile calls.
• New evidence was uncovered that helps to solve a debate around the characteristics of the Chagos pygmy blue whale’s song.

These are not conclusive findings, as each one is based on just a single recording. To confirm them, more sounds will need to be analyzed. They illustrate, however, the power of this new method to clarify details that previously might have been ambiguous.

Lead Researcher Ben Jancovich, a Ph.D. candidate from The University of New South Wales, and visiting Ph.D. student at The University of Warwick’s Mathematics Institute, said, “Our new study highlights that sometimes, the accepted tools that we’ve become comfortable with, may not actually be the best tools for the job.”

“This is especially true in cross-disciplinary fields like bioacoustics, where the methods are highly technical, and require expertise in multiple fields.”

“The new method we demonstrated offers increased accuracy and requires less expertise to use, so it should prove to be a hugely valuable tool for animal sound researchers that don’t have an engineering background.”

Current methods (including the “Short-Time Fourier Transform,” STFT) have difficulties in accurately revealing both the rhythms and pitch of sounds at the same time.

These limitations are more pronounced at lower frequencies, affecting the analysis of sounds like those made by blue whales—gentle giants of the sea, sadly listed as an endangered species.

The new technology will be available for people to use for free, via a simple-to-use app, making it easy for researchers from different fields to use, without needing extensive knowledge of audio signal analysis.

An analysis of how rhinoceros beetles deploy and retract their hindwings shows that the process is passive, requiring no muscular activity. The findings, reported in Nature, could help improve the design of flying micromachines.

Among all flying insects, beetles demonstrate the most complex wing mechanisms, involving two sets of wings: a pair of hardened forewings called elytra and a set of delicate membranous hindwings. Although extensive research exists on the origami-like folds of their wings, little is known about how they deploy and retract their hindwings.

Previous research theorizes that thoracic muscles drive a beetle’s hindwing base movement, but experimental evidence to support this theory is lacking.

Hoang-Vu Phan and colleagues combine the use of high-speed cameras and a dynamically similar flying robot to address this research gap. The authors observe that rhinoceros beetles use passive mechanisms, including their elytra, when deploying and retracting their wings.

Deployment is a two-phase process in which elevation of the elytra partially releases their hindwings in a spring-like fashion, then a flapping motion brings the hindwings into a raised flight position. They also find the beetles use their elytra to lower their hindwings into a resting position passively.

Inspired by their observations, the authors make microrobots that mimic beetle wings’ passive deployment and retraction. They find the bots successfully take off and maintain flight.

Their findings suggest that transferring the beetle’s passive hindwing processes to a flapping robot design could help to improve the capabilities of small robots that need to operate in limited or cluttered spaces.

Four decades ago, fragile falcon eggs were saved from certain death by Ken Yager and a small team of expert climbers from a nest on Yosemite’s El Capitan sheer granite wall, as protective parents dive-bombed from the sky.

Those rare eggs hatched a new generation of baby birds, then another, testament to one of the most successful conservation stories in California history—and proof of the power of human partnerships to protect a species that was once on the brink of extinction.

The number of breeding pairs of peregrine falcons, the world’s fastest animal, has doubled during a 15-year-long collaborative recovery plan involving climbers, the National Park Service and Yosemite Conservancy, the park announced on July 31.

This spring, there were 17 breeding pairs in the Park, up from only eight pairs in 2009. A total of 51 nesting sites have been counted since 2009, yielding 385 baby birds.

“It feels wonderful,” said Yager, now 65 and living in Mariposa. “I thought that the project had a very slim chance of working. I am glad I was wrong.”

The relationship between rock climbers and the cliff-dwelling birds could have been a fraught one.

Majestic birds, peregrine falcons choose cliffs for their nesting sites because the sheer walls protect chicks from terrestrial predators. The high altitude allows the birds to spot potential threats as they approach from below. Their dive speeds can exceed 200 miles per hour.

But the presence of rock climbers can scare birds away from their nesting sites, leaving their young unprotected from predators, according to research. An assessment by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the leading information source on the global extinction risk status of animals, lists rock climbing as a threat to the species.

Yosemite’s Peregrine Falcon Protection Program protects the birds by temporarily closing off some climbing routes. In its early years, it enlisted rock climbers as a valuable resource for the bird conservation project, traversing hard-to-access habitats.

“By avoiding off-limits areas and educating fellow adventurers, climbers help ensure falcon fledglings have the best chance of survival,” said Jesse McGahey, a Yosemite park ranger.

Before the mid-20th century, there were more than 3,800 adult peregrine pairs in the United States.

But by 1974, only 324 pairs remained in the U.S., killed off largely by widespread use of the synthetic insecticide DDT. An accumulation of DDT in birds caused them to lay eggs with very thin shells that easily broke.

Peregrines were declared a federally endangered species in 1970, and they were added to the California endangered species list the following year. DDT was outlawed in the U.S. in 1972.

In Yosemite, the birds vanished. The last pair was spotted in 1941 on Mount Broderick, above the Mist Trail.

In 1978, climbers Dale Bard, Hugh Burton, Bruce Hawkins and Ron Kauk were startled to discover an active nest while ascending “New Jersey Turnpike” on the southeast face of El Capitan, a 3,000-foot-high granite monolith that looms above the valley floor, according to Yager.

This spurred a recovery effort.

The Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group hired climbers to gather egg shell samples from the nest ledges for testing. Then the group launched a bold plan: take the thin-walled eggs from nests, incubate and hatch them in the safety of a laboratory, and return the young to the nests.

Yager and his group ascended to a second nest on the left of an 80-foot Ponderosa pine and removed the eggs. The eggs were placed in foam-protected containers and passed from climber to climber—”like a fire brigade,” said Yager—to a backpack. Then a lab-hatched chick, carried in a small blue fabric cage during the climb, was gently placed in the nest.

“I was terrified,” he recalled. Overhead, “the peregrines would sort of stall out, flying upward about 150 to 200 feet. When they lost their airspeed, they would do a wingover and tuck their wings in and drop like a rock.”

“Just when I thought I was going to die, they would flare their wings above my neck and glide off, just inches from me,” so close that Yager could feel the breeze. Fellow climber Rob Roy Ramey, who was supervising the process, was hit on his pack. But he didn’t fall.

Carrying the eggs, the climbers rappelled down. Within a half hour, the adult birds returned to the nest, feeding their new baby.

With climbers’ help, these captive breeding programs successfully released over 1,000 young peregrines back into the wild. Peregrines are versatile enough to nest in cities, but national parks are intended to conserve the birds’ natural ecosystems.

Now the Peregrine Falcon Protection Program, launched 15 years ago by the late wildlife biologist Jeff Maurer and supported by donors and a large gift from Maurer’s family, protects the peregrines through targeted closures of climbing areas.

Rather than issuing indiscriminate route closures, Yosemite implemented a plan based on routine monitoring of dozens of cliff sites. Buffer zones above the cliffs prevent helicopters from flying unnecessarily close.

The park imposes, adjusts or lifts closures based on each peregrine family’s activity. No more than 5% of climbing routes at a time are closed, starting in March. Once the babies have left their nests in mid-July, the routes are re-opened.

This year, for instance, the park closed routes on Higher Cathedral Rock between and including “Power Point” and “The North Face,” routes on The Rostrum in Lower Merced Canyon, and parts of the southwest face of El Capitan, between and including the routes “Octopussy” and “Dihedral Wall.”

Elsewhere around the nation, about 85 to 100 climbing areas nationwide are closed to protect falcons, as well as golden eagles, during their nesting period.

“Without help, peregrines probably would have disappeared from the park,” said Yager, who still climbs almost daily. “I am proud that I was able to have a small part in their future survival.”

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