Washington, D.C. — TEAM is now planning to add acoustic monitoring to the list of standard biodiversity monitoring protocols implemented at each site in the TEAM field network. This will supplement the initiative's monitoring efforts by adding the taxonomic groups of Orthoptera (type of insect) and Anurans (frogs and toads).

The acoustic monitoring will involve the use of autonomous recording units to be deployed for weeks at a time to record sound at scheduled time intervals each evening. To expedite the development of the recording hardware, TEAM and the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology plan to start a collaboration over the summer of 2003. TEAM hopes to deploy recording devices at all field stations by late summer or early fall, 2003.