The Amazon forest supports multiple ecosystem functions and is a huge repository for humankind. The symphony of music heard within its habitats can point to the richness of its biodiversity.
By Themis Garcia, Vanessa Chesnut and Sarah Liriano
Nov 22, 2020
The Amazon is the largest remaining tropical rainforest in the world, it holds at least 10% of the world’s known biodiversity, including endemic and endangered flora and fauna. This means an extraordinary variety of species, many of which are still unknown!
This biodiversity is important globally. Every species in this system represents solutions to a set of biological challenges -- any one of which has immense potential and can create global human benefits. For example, the discovery of ACE inhibitors, inspired by studies of the venom of a tropical viper of the Amazon called Fer de Lance, help hundreds of millions of people control hypertension around the world. Other species in the biome play similar roles in scientific research and discoveries that help humankind on a variety of aspects.
Sadly, due to human manipulation of the habitat and environmental changes, the extinction of species is happening at rates never seen before — up to a thousand times faster than what would happen naturally. According to a recent report by IPBES (The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services), an estimated 1 million species are currently facing extinction. This rate has largely picked up in the last 40 years, with threatened and vulnerable species across groups.
This is especially troublesome given that Amazon biodiversity also plays a critical role as part of global systems, influencing the global carbon cycle and through that, climate change (creating a toxic cycle, when we affect the forest and lose more of it, then we have more CO2 in the atmosphere which further damages the forest and so on).
It is well established that animal species are sensitive to their environmental conditions. Many species can even tell us when earthquakes are about to happen. On top of that, recent research shows that climate change modifies the Earth’s natural soundscapes. These two observations have pushed many researchers to study the variations of animal populations through time using acoustic measures and indices, and to use them as indicators of environmental degradation. Through sound, scientists can study and record changes in biodiversity over time and develop strategies for forest conservation.
With this project we are only trying to illustrate the complex system that lives within this biome and the kind of soundscape it produces because we want to inform people of the treasure being lost due to the previously mentioned changes. With every species lost, we lose another song. We are interested in visualizing whether this complex biodiversity is expressed equally in the variety of sounds produced to make the beautiful tropical symphony of the Amazon.
Sources: Biophony library - https://www.macaulaylibrary.org/
Ecosystem ambien sound - Sounds of the Peruvian Amazon Rainforest
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