CONWAY, Ark. (May 4, 2016) —Two Hendrix College students recently shared the results of their undergraduate research at the Arkansas Audubon Society’s spring convention at the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute on Petit Jean Mountain.
Anna Claire Atkins '17 and Charlotte Marchioni '16 presented "A fracking racket: Do birds change the way they sing when experiencing chronic noise from natural gas extraction?"
The Arkansas Audubon Society invited the students to share their research, which was underwritten by the Arkansas Audubon Society Trust, the Hendrix Odyssey Program, and Hendrix Department of Biology.
Hendrix students Evan Mitchell '16 and Claire Turkal '18 were also involved in the research.
The study focused on birds nesting in forests of the Fayetteville Shale in Arkansas, where a boom in natural gas development has occurred in the last decade.
“We were curious whether the birds, which rely heavily on acoustic communication to establish territories and obtain mates, might be changing how they sing in order to get around the masking effects of chronic noise from gas compressor stations associated with
gas wells,” said Hendrix biology professor Dr. Maureen McClung. “We found that certain species, like Indigo Buntings and Carolina Wrens, sing at a higher pitch in noisy areas. Other species, like Northern Cardinals and Tufted Titmice sing faster in noise. Still others, like Black-and-white
Warblers and Red-eyed Vireos, did not change their songs.”
“The students were involved during every step of the research, including writing grants, recording bird songs in the field, extracting data from the song recordings, analyses, and presenting the results to an audience from all around the state,” said
McClung. “This sort of research is important to the state, because it advances our picture of how gas development is affecting our natural resources, like forests and the wildlife that call them home. But the reach of our work is not limited to Arkansas. Shale development is occurring across the U.S.,
and so our results may represent impacts that occur in other regions.”
About
Hendrix College
Hendrix College is a private liberal arts college in Conway, Arkansas. Founded in 1876 and affiliated with the United Methodist Church since 1884, Hendrix is featured in Colleges
That Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change the Way You Think about Colleges and is nationally recognized in numerous college guides, lists, and rankings for academic quality, community, innovation, and value. For more information, visit
www.hendrix.edu.