Listening for Change: Acoustic Monitoring of Pelophylax Breeding Assemblages - with Dr Nikhil Modak
IEN Research Spotlights are community events hosted by the India Ecoacoustics Network (IEN), where we highlight works of researchers who employ acoustics to explore and understand their environments. These sessions are free and open to join for anyone with an interest in ecoacoustics and environmental research.
We invite you to the 20th IEN Research Spotlight featuring Dr Nikhil Modak.
Dr Modak is a conservation biologist and evolutionary ecologist with over a decade of research experience across India and Europe. His work spans behavioural ecology, bioacoustics, evolutionary divergence, and ecological monitoring, with a strong field foundation in amphibian biology and herpetofaunal research. He recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute of Zoology and Biomedical Research, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland, where he investigated mitonuclear interactions and metabolic efficiency in Pelophylax frogs, and he continues to collaborate on research exploring trait evolution, environmental adaptation, and acoustic ecology.
In this talk, Dr Modak will present a passive acoustic monitoring project investigating frog communities in the fish ponds of the Oświęcim Basin in Poland's Vistula River Valley. Focusing on Pelophylax ridibundus, P. lessonae, and their hybrid P. esculentus, the project uses passive acoustic monitoring to document breeding activity, identify species-specific calls, and better understand changes in community composition over time. The project explores a non-invasive approach to long-term amphibian monitoring while contributing to research on species interactions, hybridisation, and the potential impacts of environmental change. The project is currently in the data analysis phase through a collaboration between Jagiellonian University, Poland, and James Cook University, Australia.
Join us to learn how passive acoustic monitoring is advancing amphibian research and conservation. To secure the Zoom link and receive event updates, kindly RSVP via this Luma page.