McNair Summer Research Program
Faculty Mentor(s)
Nathalie Reyns
Publication Date
Summer 2025
Disciplines
Environmental Sciences
Description, Abstract, or Artist's Statement
Recreational and commercial boat activity, military and construction operations, and seismic surveys among other human activities produce excessive sound that is classified as anthropogenic noise. Because the intensity and frequency of anthropogenic noise is often higher than that of natural underwater acoustic stimuli, marine animals may experience physiological damage to their sound-detecting organs which in turn, affects their communication and orientation abilities. In our study, we aimed to analyze the differences in behaviors exhibited by the California two-spot octopus (Octopus bimaculoides) when exposed to various volumes of noise at 54 Hz. To further investigate behavioral changes under varying conditions, we exposed the octopus to 3 different colored environments: orange, yellow and brown. We used a previously published behavior log to quantify octopus behaviors during 10-min exposures to combined sound and color treatments. Of the 9 behaviors we recorded, changes in respiration and color were the two most common behaviors recorded during our experiments. While there were no significant differences in behavior by color and noise treatment, respiratory change decreased with noise volume in the orange and yellow treatments, and was overall higher in the brown treatments. Additionally, color change was less frequent under varying noise conditions during the brown color treatment than under orange or yellow treatments. More replication is necessary to comprehend the impacts of noise on O. bimaculoides behavior, but this study was a first step towards developing an experimental protocol for future work. Such studies could help us better understand how anthropogenic noise affects the behavior of marine animals, especially invertebrates, which have been historically under-studied compared to mammals and fishes.