Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 18, 1992 TAG: 9203180178
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Call it odd. Call it bizarre.
Grubitz, an associate professor of biology at Roanoke College, calls it science.
He records bird songs, particularly that of the Northern mockingbird.
And why?
"Because the mockingbird mimics other species," Grubitz explains. "And if it doesn't mean anything, how come it's so good at mimicking?
"And if the mimicked sound means something only to other mockingbirds, why is their mimicked song so faithful to the model?"
For an explanation, you must descend to his office, tucked in a quiet corner of the Life Sciences Building on the Market Street side of the college's Salem campus.
On an L-shaped table sit several tape recorders, linked to an array of computer equipment. Grubitz hits the "play" button on a tape recorder, hits a few keys on the computer and up pops a primary colored display, called a "Real Time Spectrogram."
The spectrogram offers a visual display of a bird song and allows Grubitz to find differences and similarities in the sounds.
Grubitz is mesmerized.
"You see it as you hear it," he says, fiddling with the jagged-edged peaks and lines displayed on a screen. "You can measure the length of songs. You can make quantitative analyzation of notes. I can use the computer to take averages or other statistical analyses of the various notes."
The equipment Grubitz uses is a "SIGNAL" analysis system, a computer-based instrument used to analyze animal sounds. Grubitz's system is the only one of its kind in Virginia and one of few in the Southeast.
Last year, Roanoke College received a $250,000 challenge grant from the Kresge Foundation of Troy, Mich., to raise $1.25 million for science research. The college met the challenge, bringing the total to $1.5 million.
The grant stipulated that $1 million be placed in an endowment. The remaining $500,000 was used to purchase equipment for the college's biology, chemistry and physics departments. Grubitz received $20,000 to buy the SIGNAL system and accompanying bioacoustic equipment.
The mockingbird song has been studied for years, but little has been done to determine how the imitations affect the "models" - the birds being mocked, Grubitz said.
"I hope to determine if mockingbirds recognize the species," he said. "Do they recognize other species as individuals? For some species, it's known that they can differentiate between a neighbor and a non-neighbor."
Two students - Wendy Conner and Ray Bowman - are assisting Grubitz in his research.
"Taping the bird songs, the mimickry - it's really fascinating," Conner said. "That's what kind of pushed me toward this."
Grubitz hopes to extend SIGNAL's use beyond bird sounds. A colleague wants to examine fish sounds. Another wants to study the squirrel's "bark," he said.
"This is like getting a new train set and learning to work the switches," Grubitz said.
by CNB