listen to nature

As the very predictable disaster unfolds in slow motion around us, I am extremely lucky that my work isn't affected (yet). I've been working from home for the last 20 years, and the magazines I write for carry on publishing as normal, so all good.

I am following the crisis very closely of course, not least because it's mainly been caused by people in power ignoring the science behind it (it's the same risk-denialist school of thinking that is also driving climate change, only this time it's happening a bit faster!), and apparently not understanding elementary things like exponential functions or even multiplications, see my rant about that from yesterday. I've also done a feature on the animal connections of coronavirus diseases, which appears to be on open access, but if that fails, there is a magic link in this blog entry.

Apart from these, my features will continue to cover other topics than the pandemic. As I write for magazines that have at least three weeks of production time, any corona news will be ancient history by the time a piece comes out, so the evolving situation isn't a suitable topic for my work. Instead, I hope that I can distract you from the apocalyptic scenery around us with some timeless and exciting science.

Today's feature revisits the new(ish) field of soundscape ecology, which tells us how much we can learn by systematically listening to nature. This is especially true for life in the oceans, where other observation channels are of limited use, but there are also lessons to be learned from the sounds of the forests:

Eavesdropping on ecosystems

Current Biology Volume 30, Issue 6, 23 March 2020, Pages R237-R240

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Many marine mammals, like the bearded seal shown here, use acoustic signals. Monitoring their vocalisations can help with conservation work. (Photo: kerryinlondon/Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0).)