Goal: The Biological Sciences Department has just opened our Rain Bird Aquatic Learning Center, partially funded by Rain Bird Corp., as part of our BioTrek Facility. This teaching and research facility is described on the web site (http://www.csupomona.edu/%7Ebiotrek/index.html). The department is providing basic equipment (fish tanks, etc.) and supplies, and is maintaining the facility.
My area of expertise is South American fishes, especially catfishes, many of which are well known for sound production, as are many of our local fishes. Although I have done extensive field work on these fishes, I have not been able to investigate or utilize fish sounds in my classes due to lack of equipment and aquarium facilities. I would like to utilize our new facilities to become engaged in a new area of research with my students, the detection, identification and analysis of sounds produced by fishes.
The areas of investigation include recording and characterizing the sounds of fishes in the field, in South America and locally. This will be an addition to our Tropical Field Biology Course. Analysis of sound will be done with a computer and with software we already have available. Investigations will be done in the lab to determine the significance of the sounds to the biology of the animals, including playback of recorded sounds.