Pinniped Hearing in Complex Acoustic Environments
Abstract
Pinnipeds (seals, sea lions, and walruses) are amphibious marine mammals that are susceptible to coastal anthropogenic noise. The long-term goals of this effort are to improve understanding of (1) the sound detection capabilities of several pinniped species, and (2) the effects of noise exposure on the sound detection capabilities of these species. The laboratory and field studies associated with this research will reveal certain aspects of how amphibious mammals receive, perceive, and recognize acoustic information in background noise and will contribute broadly to current knowledge of marine mammal bioacoustics. Improve understanding of hearing in pinnipeds by extending psychoacoustic profiles of sound reception obtained from simplified auditory processing tasks to those describing performance under increasingly complex acoustic conditions. Relate laboratory measurements to concurrent field studies of communication in fluctuating natural noise backgrounds. Strengthen predictive models that describe how signal structure and noise environments interact to constrain auditory performance, and develop weighting functions that can be used for species-typical acoustic risk assessments.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 30, 2013
- Accession Number
- ADA602519
Entities
People
- Colleen Reichmuth
Organizations
- University of California, Santa Cruz