Hannah Olson

Date of Award

2022

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Natural Sciences

First Advisor

Rycyk, Athena

Area of Concentration

Biology

Abstract

This research project explored the current knowledge and foundation of freshwater aquatic turtle sound localization. In order to better understand sound localization, a natural response-based test was conducted to observe changes in behavior such as heading, movement, and distance traveled when a novel sound was played from one of two speakers. I had two hypotheses: 1) Mississippi map turtles (G. psedogeographica) will move away from the sound source more often than they will move towards it when a sound is playing, and 2) that when they move, they will move a farther distance away from the sound source when a sound is playing. Results indicate that when a turtle moved, it was more likely to move away from a speaker when a sound played (92.6% of the time) vs. when a sound did not play (28.6% of the time) (p-value = 1.88e-05). Future research should use a several-choice sound discrimination test to evaluate how fine their sound localization abilities are, for example, can they identify which speaker plays a sound out of 8 potential choices.

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