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When sensory ecologist Megan Gall joined the faculty at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, in 2013, an experiment presented itself. A number of researchers at Vassar were studying browsing behavior in deer and the massive amount of damage it can do to the forest understory. “They had all these deer exclosures available,” areas in a nearby forest that had been fenced to keep deer out, she says. She was interested in how the physical environment influenced the propagation of sounds, particularly animal calls used for communication, but no studies had looked at how organisms within an environment might alter the habitat in a way that changes its acoustics.
Researchers knew that in forest habitats, leaves, trunks, and understory cause sounds, especially those of high frequency, to echo. In open grassland, on the other hand, sounds are less likely to bounce off an obstruction, but the ...
