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discussion / Sensors  / 20 June 2020

Seeking research projects related to monitoring wildlife behavior

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Hi all, my name is Ben Seleb and I'm an incoming robotics PhD student at Georgia Tech. I've been given the awesome opportunity to identify my own research topic, and I'm very interested in developing tech platforms to monitor/recognize wildlife behavior in the field. I've performed a number of informational interviews related to the topic, but I would love to hear some more ideas from the WildLabs community!

High biodiversity areas are my lab's greater priority, but I'm open to all environments and species. In addition to stationary sensor networks, I'm seriously considering novel methods of mobility that could offer additional coverage/advantages. 

I'm additionally very interested in open source, low-cost solutions, so any opportunity to implement those ideas into the project would be ideal! 

If you have any ideas, please let me know. I'd love to discuss. Thanks!



Carly Batist
@carlybatist  | she/her
Science Outreach Lead-Rainforest Connection (RFCx) & ArbimonEcoacoustics, biodiversity monitoring, primates, lemurs
Involvement Tier 4
WILDLABS Alumni
WILDLABS Event Speaker

22 June 2020 8:54pm

Hi Ben!

I think we've had correspondence on Twitter in the past, but can't remember for sure... Anyways, I'm a primatology PhD student and do fieldwork in Madagascar studying lemurs (specifically Ranomafana National Park). My dissertation is on lemur vocal communication, but I am doing an applied chapter focused on passive acoustic monitoring as well. I've tested out a bunch of different PAM devices (ARU's-autonomous recording units) e.g., SongMeter, Swift, AudioMoth and am currently annotating call files and prepping a training dataset that I hope to begin using with an ML model to identify species-specific calls. Vocals are a great use-case with behavior and tech as you can sometimes ID contexts, individuals, etc based on acoustic structure or usage which would be really cool (albeit very complicated) to incorporate. 

Also have some experience with camera-traps, and the area I work in in Mada is part of the TEAM network so I'm hoping to incorporate camera-traps and ARUs in the same area. I work with local  researchers and students (via the Malagasy-run Centre ValBio research station) and am looking to develop community-led initiatives as well so I've got the low-cost, open-source interest as well.  

I'll stop typing an essay now, but definitely would love to chat!! Feel free to message me on Twitter or email me ([email protected]).