Dr Morell has analyzed the ears of 32 individuals from 10 cetacean species during the timeframe of the Cetacean Inner Ear project. Some ears from harbor porpoise and beluga whale were processed for scanning electron microscopy. We used geometric morphometrics measurements from scanning electron micrographs of the organ of Corti from 10 locations of the cochlear spiral in harbor porpoises, beluga whales, mustached bats, rats, mice and gerbils. We used the data of echolocating bats and rodents (species of known frequency maps) to train machine learning techniques to further predict the cochlear frequency map for harbor porpoise and beluga whale.
The main research results of the project are: 1) the predictions of cochlear frequency maps for cetacean species such as harbor porpoise and beluga whale based on the morphometrics of the organ of Corti, as well as 2) the optimization of a protocol to analyze inner ears allowing the detection of potential cases of noise-induced hearing loss. Immuofluorescence protocol allows us to combine several antibodies to label the cells of the organ of Corti and type I afferent innervation, which transmits the auditory information. The new protocol using immunofluorescence developed in this project will allow us to distinguish between newly formed lesions from old ones.
We disseminated the results of this project through different platforms, ranging from public lectures, Facebook and online media publications, and newspapers addressed to general public, to presentations in workshops and international conferences for scientific community, industry and regulators. During the duration of the project Cetacean Inner Ear, Dr Morell published 5 peer-reviewed articles (1 is currently submitted, and 3 in preparation from this project), 1 book chapter, 3 case reports, 8 invited talks, 5 oral and 4 poster presentations in international conferences.
