{"id":42645,"date":"2025-07-08T16:06:56","date_gmt":"2025-07-08T20:06:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nywolf.org\/?p=42645"},"modified":"2025-07-08T16:07:04","modified_gmt":"2025-07-08T20:07:04","slug":"wcc-is-learning-the-power-of-audiomoths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nywolf.org\/2025\/07\/wcc-is-learning-the-power-of-audiomoths\/","title":{"rendered":"WCC is Learning the Power of AudioMoths"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Listening to the Wild: How AudioMoths Are Helping Us Understand Gulf Coast Canids and Inform Red Wolf Recovery<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Over several days this past month, WCC’s Conservation Scientist Colleen O’Donnell found herself wading through waist-high grass and weaving through dense branches to find the perfect trees to attach AudioMoths. <\/p>\n\n\n\n What is an AudioMoth? It is a small audio recording device that allows researchers to identify and monitor all kinds of wildlife, including birds, frogs, bats, and other mammals, even humans! Species tend to occupy unique “acoustic niches” within the soundscape, which means they can be identified by the timing and frequency of their vocalizations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Right now, Colleen is gaining field experience deploying AudioMoth equipment to monitor birds and their responses to human drivers.\u00a0In the near future, Colleen plans to deploy these small but mighty audio recording devices\u2014alongside McNeese State University master\u2019s student Tanner Broussard\u2014across the Wolf Conservation Center\u2019s field site in coastal Texas and Louisiana, where Gulf Coast Canids, coyotes with high Red Wolf ancestry, persist and demonstrate high survival rates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She hopes that by studying canid vocalizations and human activity\u2014 paired with Sunny Murphy\u2019s camera trap data\u2014 we can harness the power of non-invasive field techniques to better understand what makes Gulf Coast Canids so successful at surviving in human-dominated landscapes. Ultimately, the goal is to apply these insights to support wild Red Wolf recovery.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n