<p>
	<img alt="" src="{filedir_5}DP2(3).png" style="float: right; width: 250px; height: 188px;" />A joint research effort of the Au Sable Institute and Calvin College (Michigan) aims to determine the effects of noise pollution associated with roads and oil drilling on communities of forest songbirds, and to assess whether reductions in bird abundance and diversity in these noise-affected areas can be mitigated through the introduction of another acoustic cue: playback of songs recorded from other male songbirds. The first step of this research employed this concept &ndash; generally referred to as conspecific attraction &ndash; to assess the effects of playback on a community of songbirds that reside in low noise areas in the Au Sable region. In addition to being foundational for further work, these first year results offer much to the scientific community, and have been recently published in the journal, <em>Behavioral Ecology...</em></p>
