On Tuesday, May 5th, students from our Animal Communication course taught by Dr. Roberta Salmi presented their cumulative projects on animal communication during a mini conference.

The Animal Communication mini conference highlighted a semester of student-led research, with projects examining gorilla vocal exchanges, the effects of noise on killer whale communication, dogs’ responses to human voice familiarity and tone, and call variation among sympatric bat species in relation to body size and niche separation. 

Students engaged in the full research process, from proposal development to data collection, analysis, and presentation, while advancing core UGA institutional competencies. These included critical thinking through data interpretation and problem-solving; quantitative reasoning through data analysis and visualization; and written and oral communication through scientific writing and presentations. Their work also strengthened their ability to collaborate and work effectively in teams through sustained group research, culminating in a very successful conference!

PhD student, Hadley Mueller-Hill commented on what she learned the skills she developed., "I really enjoyed working on this project evaluating vocal response in western lowland gorillas and how it shifts across behavior and visibility contexts. It was a great opportunity to apply concepts from our Animal Communication class to real data, especially thinking about how communication can serve many purposes, including both coordination and maintenance of social relationships. Through this project, I learned how to analyze vocal behavior, make informative network diagrams, and gained a lot of experience using statistical models to test behavioral questions." 

Undergraduate student, Charlotte Fowler, commented on how what they learned could assist with future research on bats in Georgia, "This final project presentation in Animal Communication was a great opportunity for my teammates and me to work on our collaboration, organization, and research skills. Having to delve into the world of data analysis and a thorough literature review helped me understand the complexity of professional research, and I gained insight into how niche partitioning in bat species works. Overall, I feel as though our research methods and results showed our interest in the topic and can help with future conservation research for not only bat species, but also other wildlife."