163 - Fish Sounds with Audrey Looby

Growling gurnards, drumming piranhas, calling toadfish – Did you know fish are one of the largest groups of sound-producing animals and have the greatest variety of specialized organs to make sounds? Tune in to hear Audrey Looby, a Ph.D. student with the University of Florida Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences Department and Nature Coast Biological Station, discuss her innovative research on Gulf toadfish calling, intertidal soundscapes of a living and a hardened shoreline, and community-level impacts of anthropogenic noise pollution. Alongside a group of international collaborators, Audrey developed the FishSounds website – an online inventory of sound-producing fish species with recordings donated by researchers. Her review article associated with this project will be published in Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries later this year.  

Main points: Acknowledge your biases in science and in life. Fish sounds are cool!  

How to get in contact with Audrey or learn more about fish sounds:  

Email: alooby@ufl.edu  

FishSounds website: Fishsounds.net  

FishSounds Twitter: @FishSoundsWeb  

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Thanks as always to Andrew Gialanella for the fantastic intro/outro music.  

The Fisheries Podcast is a completely independent podcast, not affiliated with a larger organization or entity. Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by the podcast. The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. Views and opinions expressed by the hosts are those of that individual and do not necessarily reflect the view of any entity with those individuals are affiliated in other capacities (such as employers).  

 Audio 1: Growl sound produced by the streaked gurnard (Chelidonichthys lastoviza) recorded during the work of Amorim and Hawkings, 2000.  

Audio 2: Drum chorus produced by the freshwater drum (Aplodinotus grunniens) recorded during the work of Rountree and Juanes, 2017.  

Audio 3: Complex call produced by the Bocon toadfish (Amphichthys cryptocentrus) recorded during the work of Staaterman et al., 2017 and Staaterman et al., 2018.  

Audio 4: Drum produced by the red piranha (Pygocentrus nattereri) recorded during the work of Raick et al., 2020.   

Audio 5: Complex call produced by the Gulf toadfish (Opsanus beta) recording during the PhD dissertation work of Audrey Looby.