Hi Everyone, for my undergraduate thesis, I am conducting research on an understudied species, the eastern carpenter bee, Xylocopa virginica. Here, I will be using a Raspberry Pi to both operate data collection devices and to store collected data. Transducers and a camera will be placed outside of an eastern carpenter bee nesting gallery, and vibroacoustic and circadian activity pattern data will be collected.

Location

This work will be conducted in western Massachusetts, most likely in Amherst, Massachusetts. The study will occur in either a highly disturbed or relatively undisturbed site, where eastern carpenter bees are constructing galleries.

Goals and Motivations

This work will contribute to the body of knowledge on an understudied large carpenter bee species, by describing species typical sound production and activity patterns. I also intend to demonstrate ease of designing and building one's own data collection instrument, which is a much cheaper alternative to purchasing expensive scientific equipment. By combining hardware with open source software, researchers are able to build custom instruments without dedicating large portions of their funding to buying expensive instruments.

People who are involved

I am a student in the Open Science Instrumentation and Data Collection thesis seminar at UMass Amherst.

What are we working on now:

I am currently reviewing the literature on eastern carpenter bees and on Raspberry Pi machine learning. I am also working on a budget proposal to fund this research.

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