(The Zoom meeting link will be emailed to all members prior to the date.)
If you attend in person, along with refreshments, you will enjoy viewing some of the Academy’s spectacular insect specimens displayed in the meeting room.
Location
The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University
1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia, PA 19103
Butterfly Foyer, Second Floor
Description
A treasure trove of field recordings was rediscovered in the Entomology Department at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University. Recorded by Daniel Otte, PhD, an expert on Orthoptera taxonomy and their species-specific songs, they represent nearly 250 hours of recordings on cassette and reel-to-reel tapes. The natural degradation of analog tapes prioritized their digitization and an Institute of Museum and Library Services’ Award and partnership with the Sound Archives at Drexel University made saving these tapes a reality.
Using the open-source software Audacity, the digitized field recordings have been transcribed and are being mined for species-specific song clips, which can be identified and associated with specimen level occurrence data. Focusing on species represented on the tapes, more than 90K specimens from the Academy’s comprehensive Orthoptera collection have been data based using the Symbiota-based Ecdysis portal and are available online. New audio-handling functionality in Symbiota was sponsored by this project’s funding and completed by the Symbiota Support Hub and ASU-BIOKIC developers. The song clips are being extracted and cataloged and will be available on Ecdysis, GBIF, and Xeno-Canto.
Mark your Calendar – Next Meeting: Wednesday, April 23, 2025. Presentation of the Calvert Awards to students displaying unusual accomplishment and interest in insect-related study.
Audacity Audio Editing Software – Brachytrupes membranaceus (Drury, 1773)
