Monica Retamosa was During the change of tape recorder batteries, when she first heard Bellbird. Standing on the forest floor, she looked at the trees, scanning its source metallic and powerful soundLooking for a bird for half an hour, to no avail. Bellbird sings from trees, where it is noticeable to peers, but concealed to people below. Despite this, Retamosa smiled: he cares for the ecosystems in the Amistos biological corridor in Costa Rica, listening to them.
In nature, living things exploit sound for almost everything. He is called to attract colleagues, communicate identity, warn against dangers, lead the road and facilitate in hunting or defending. For decades, scientists have followed species with recorders in hand and still yes, although they are increasingly using remote registration devices. The study of sound organisms is known as bioacustetics. Retamosa has been doing this work for 10 years.
Using bioacoustic recordings, studies have shown that some birds shout loudly to send themselves in cities and that the hatch of sea turtles communicate from the nest to coordinate their hatching. And when bioacustetics is combined with other sounds – those made by people, as well as natural landscape sounds, such as wave failures at sea – it is possible to interpret a deeper ecological significance. It is possible to monitor changes in biological diversity, detect threats and measure the effectiveness of the protection strategy. This wider sound analysis is known as ecoacustetics – and this is exactly the work in Costa Rica.
Retamosa has been working at the National University of Costaca for 20 years, at the International Institute of Nature Conservation and Management. He uses bioacusthetics and ecoacoustics to examine the sounds of this petite country of Central America, which hosts over half a million species.
“The sounds have been forgotten from the point of view of protection,” says retamosa. “We hear more most of the time than we see. It is likely that when interference occurs in the system, we can detect them earlier by sound or lack of it than other factors. “
Development of automated recordings revolutionized bioacusthetic and ecoacoustic. Now research groups can suspend sensors that record fragments of the day for months without disturbing wild nature. Retamosa likes this strategy because it is non -invasive for animals, makes it easier to have ears in gigantic areas and complex to available places, and sometimes helps to discover mysterious species.
Although he prefers to monitor ecosystems from afar, retamosa still has to enter the forest deep to configure the register. Visits to the pitch are fascinating, but never a Sunday walk. She wandered nicely through mud and branches, along with her colleagues Jimmy Barrantes and Randall Jiménez. They went up and the endless slopes. She used to fall and broke the ribs. But the work does not end with the installation: they must come back to change batteries and memory cards. In other countries they exploit solar panels and the Internet to receive data in real time; In the obscure, soggy rainforests, Costa Rica, is still made by hand.