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Starts: 07:30
An online talk via Zoom. (to receive a link please email ofcsecretary20@gmail.com)
People have been listening to nature and deriving meaning from its soundscapes since time immemorial, but with the advent of powerful computing technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), we are able to learn more from those sounds than ever before. One increasingly popular application of this "bioacoustics" work is wildlife conservation. From whale songs to bat echolocations, researchers all over the globe have been analysing the unique squeaks, bellows, and tweets of our wildlife to learn more about their life history traits, communication techniques, and more. But you needn't travel far to see this work in action: University of Edinburgh PhD candidate Alixandra Prybyla and her intrepid team have been surveying bumblebees in Orkney's own Ring of Brodgar for two seasons now. They have dual goals: firstly, to construct an AI algorithm that could detect the Great Yellow Bumblebee—Britain's most endangered bumblebee--as it foraged nearby; and, secondly, to use this algorithm in a remote acoustic monitoring station that could surveil Great Yellow populations round the clock, thus allowing for more rapid conservation interventions. Using both cutting edge artificial intelligence techniques and traditional on-the-ground surveying methods, the research team must balance the technological and the natural in new and challenging ways. Join us for a discussion on Prybyla's work and how the Orcadian landscape has helped shape a promising conservation technology.
