"The rainforest is dense with sound. Like musicians in an orchestra, each animal plays a part, occupying its own “acoustic niche” in both frequency and time. But repeated fires are silencing the symphony, according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Researchers from the University of Maryland recorded thousands of hours of sounds in the Amazon Rainforest. They looked at three types of forests: those that had been logged, burned once, and burned multiple times. All were located along the “arc of deforestation,” an area along the southeastern edge of the Brazilian Amazon where development pressures such as cattle ranching are encroaching into the last remaining vestiges of intact forest.
“Sounds are a pretty good indicator of what species are around you, especially in rainforest, where there is huge diversity,” study co-author Anshuman Swain, a University of Maryland ecologist, told Insider.
The recordings highlighted a stark difference in animal sounds between forests that had experienced multiple fires versus only one fire. In the forests with repeated fires, animal communication networks were quieter, with less diversity of sound than in logged forests or forests burned only once."
Advertisement 
