The Effects of Anthropogenic Mining Noise on House Mice (Mus musculus)

Abstract

The implications of opencast mines throughout Queensland, Australia range from that of the alterations of governmental acts regarding the regulations of machinery noises to that of the auditory effects on small mammals surrounding the environment. With the increased demand of coal comes the necessity of enhanced mining machinery equipment (Scott et al. 2010). This has resulted in larger machines that bring with them an increased anthropogenic noise output that the fauna must face (Hartman et al. 1992). Using three groups of House Mice (Mus musculus) exposed to varying decibel levels of a mining noise soundtrack, the effects of exposure to this auditory stressor were ascertained through the post-mortem measurement of total body weight and adrenal gland. Both males and females showed a trend of decreased total body weight with an increase in decibel exposure. Only males showed a relationship between increased decibel level exposure of the mining noise soundtrack and increased adrenal gland weight. While some relationships were found between both total body weight and adrenal gland weight, further research is necessary in order to expand the sample size and confirm that such correlations are significant.