Knoxville media recently published news describing the practical conservation impacts of working across disciplines. Dr. Brad Cohen’s lab in Biology and Dr. Doug Talbert’s lab in Computer Science are working together to monitor and restore one of the flagship birds of the Southeast – the bobwhite quail.
Cohen’s graduate student, Mateo Gannod, developed a detector that uses artificial intelligence to identify when and where bobwhite quail calls are occurring. Devices were placed in grassland areas to record ambient sounds. The new AI device identifies quail calls from thousands of hours of these recordings. This technology will allow researchers to better monitor this increasingly rare but important gamebird.