WVXU: Quail 'recording studio' may help birds recover

UC College of Arts and Sciences assistant professor Elizabeth Hobson and her students are studying a covey of quail in her biology lab. Bobwhite are in sharp decline in Ohio and other parts of their historic range where they used to number in the millions.

UC undergraduate Sophia Clemen and Hobson have created soundproof quail "recording studios" to capture each bird's distinctive calls to map on a spectrograph. This could help wildlife conservationists distinguish individual calling birds in the wild to better understand their populations and distribution.

UC graduate student Sanjay Prasher is studying the gregarious quail's social systems over time.

Hobson created a novel system that uses QR codes to manage animal care efficiently in her lab. She wrote about her methods in the journal Animal Behavior and Cognition.

Listen to the WVXU story.

Featured image at top: UC assistant professor Elizabeth Hobson holds a bobwhite in her biology lab. Hobson studies animal behavior, behavioral ecology and cognition, among other research topics. Photo/Andrew Higley/UC Marketing + Brand