Dr Stuart Newson – Acoustic monitoring of small mammals

Stuart works for the BTO but his first love is bats and he has been working to develop citizen science as an approach to extensive bat monitoring – using static detectors and a cloud-based analytical tool (the BTO Pipeline) to understand the distribution of bat species. He has now developed a reference library of small mammal ultrasonic calls which allow a similar approach to surveying for species with characteristic social calls. This is particularly useful in the search for dormice but can also be used to identify other rodents and shrews. This could be a hugely valuable alternative to labour-intensive trapping or nest box surveys.

His wonderful talk provided us detail on how acoustic monitoring can be used as an effective survey method for small mammals.

If you missed the talk, or would like to watch it again the recorded zoom video can be found on our Youtube channel here!