Bioacoustics

Vector transmitted diseases are accountable for more than 17% of all infectious disease cases worldwide according to World Health Organization. Insect vectors play a key role in transmitting diseases and loss of lives. Modified and advanced vector control strategies with chemical insecticides are needed as vectors are resistant to a particular insecticide. Moreover, chemical control is cost-inductive and may give rise to health issues. In this review, bioacoustics have been narrated as a novel technology for eco-friendly and cost-effective control of insect vectors...

The ongoing biodiversity crisis, driven by factors such as land-use change and global warming, emphasizes the need for effective ecological monitoring methods. Acoustic monitoring of biodiversity has emerged as an important monitoring tool. Detecting human voices in soundscape monitoring projects is useful both for analyzing human disturbance and for privacy filtering. Despite significant strides in deep learning in recent years, the deployment of large neural networks on compact devices poses challenges due to memory and latency constraints...

Wolves howl and dogs bark, both are able to produce variants of either vocalization, but we see a distinct difference in usage between wild and domesticate. Other domesticates also show distinct changes to their vocal output: domestic cats retain meows, a distinctly subadult trait in wildcats. Such differences in acoustic output are well-known, but the causal mechanisms remain little-studied. Potential links between domestication and vocal output are intriguing for multiple reasons, and offer a unique opportunity to explore a prominent hypothesis in domestication research: the neural crest/domestication syndrome hypothesis...

Soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merr.) is an important agricultural crop around the world, and previous studies suggest that honey bees (Apis mellifera Linnaeus) can be a component for optimizing soybean production through pollination. Determining when bees are present in soybean fields is critical for assessing pollination activity and identifying periods when bees are absent so that bee-toxic pesticides may be applied. There are currently several methods for detecting pollinator activity, but these existing methods have substantial limitations, including the bias of pan trappings against large bees and the limited duration of observation possible using manual techniques...

Moose are a popular species with recreationists but understudied acoustically. We used publicly available videos to characterize and quantify the vocalizations of moose in New Hampshire separated by age/sex class. We found significant differences in peak frequency, center frequency, bandwidth, and duration across the groups. Our results provide quantification of wild moose vocalizations across age/sex classes, which is a key step for passive acoustic detection of this species and highlights public videos as a potential resource for bioacoustics research of hard-to-capture and understudied species...

Fish bioacoustics, or the study of fish hearing, sound production, and acoustic communication, was discussed as early as Aristotle. However, questions about how fishes hear were not really addressed until the early 20th century. Work on fish bioacoustics grew after World War II and considerably in the 21st century since investigators, regulators, and others realized that anthropogenic (human-generated sounds), which had primarily been of interest to workers on marine mammals, was likely to have a major impact on fishes (as well as on aquatic invertebrates)...

Advertisement calls in frogs have evolved to be species-specific signals of recognition and are therefore considered an essential component of integrative taxonomic approaches to identify species and delineate their distribution range. The species rich genus Microhyla is a particularly challenging group for species identification, discovery and conservation management due to the small size, conserved morphology and wide distribution of its members, necessitating the need for a thorough description of their vocalization...

Light is the most important Zeitgeber for temporal synchronization in nature. Artificial light at night (ALAN) disrupts the natural light-dark rhythmicity and thus negatively affects animal behavior. However, to date, ALAN research has been mostly conducted under laboratory conditions in this context. Here, we used the field cricket, Gryllus bimaculatus, to investigate the effect of ALAN on insect behavior under semi-natural conditions, i.e., under shaded natural lighting conditions, natural temperature and soundscape...

In their recent publication in Patterns , the authors proposed a methodology based on sample-free Bayesian neural networks and label smoothing to improve both predictive and calibration performance on animal call detection. Such approaches have the potential to foster trust in algorithmic decision making and enhance policy making in applications about conservation using recordings made by on-site passive acoustic monitoring equipment. This interview is a companion to these authors' recent paper, "Propagating Variational Model Uncertainty for Bioacoustic Call Label Smoothing"...

Along with propagating the input toward making a prediction, Bayesian neural networks also propagate uncertainty. This has the potential to guide the training process by rejecting predictions of low confidence, and recent variational Bayesian methods can do so without Monte Carlo sampling of weights. Here, we apply sample-free methods for wildlife call detection on recordings made via passive acoustic monitoring equipment in the animals' natural habitats. We further propose uncertainty-aware label smoothing, where the smoothing probability is dependent on sample-free predictive uncertainty, in order to downweigh data samples that should contribute less to the loss value...

The genus Svistella Gorochov, 1987 includes 10 species from Asia, with nine documented in China. In this study, a new species, Svistellayayun He, sp. nov. , is described from Xizang, China. Morphologically, it resembles S.rufonotata (Chopard, 1932) but can be distinguished by a smaller inner tympanum, dark-brown setae on the 5th segment of the maxillary palp, and a rounded apex on the ectoparamere. To validate our morphological inferences and support the description of S.yayun sp. nov. as a new species, we performed a PCA based on bioacoustics parameters and molecular analysis...

Recent resolution of prevailing taxonomic ambiguities in the genus Sphaerotheca and new species discoveries from urban/suburban landscapes highlight the need for attention to non-forested habitats for amphibian conservation. In this paper, we review the status of the members of the genus Sphaerotheca and justify the synonymy of Sphaerotheca magadha as a junior synonym of Sphaerotheca swani. The prospects of resurrection of Sphaerotheca swani (herein preliminarily referred to as Sphaerotheca cf. breviceps [swani]) are discussed...

In animal communication, the sound pressure level (SPL) of the acoustic signals has been studied in relation to various biological functions. Previous research reported that senders and receivers benefit from being at elevated positions. However, sometimes, researchers find contradictory results. Using a transmission experiment, we measured SPL of two acoustic stimuli: (i) white noise, and (ii) advertisement calls of the Iberian tree frog (Hyla molleri) at two different heights above ground level (0.05 and 0...

The study of nocturnal bird migration brings observational challenges because of reduced visibility and observability of birds at night. Remote sensing tools, especially radars, have long been the preferred choice of scientists to study nocturnal migrations. A major downside of these remote sensing tools is the lack of species-level information. With technological advances in recent decades and with improved accessibility and affordability of acoustic tools, sound recordings have steeply increased in popularity...

In recent years, the impact of prenatal sound on development, notably for programming individual phenotypes for postnatal conditions, has increasingly been revealed. However, the mechanisms through which sound affects physiology and development remain mostly unexplored. Here, I gather evidence from neurobiology, developmental biology, cellular biology and bioacoustics to identify the most plausible modes of action of sound on developing embryos. First, revealing often-unsuspected plasticity, I discuss how prenatal sound may shape auditory system development and determine individuals' later capacity to receive acoustic information...

This review discusses how welfare scientists can examine vocalizations to gain insight into the affective states of individual animals. In recent years, researchers working in professionally managed settings have recognized the value of monitoring the types, rates, and acoustic structures of calls, which may reflect various aspects of welfare. Fortunately, recent technological advances in the field of bioacoustics allow for vocal activity to be recorded with microphones, hydrophones, and animal-attached devices (e...

A new species of the genus Leptobrachella , L.guinanensis sp. nov. , is described in this study based on morphological, molecular, and bioacoustic data. The species was discovered in the Shiwandashan National Nature Reserve in Shangsi County, Guangxi, China. Phylogenetically, L.guinanensis sp. nov. is closely related to L.ventripunctata . However, there are distinct morphological differences between L.guinanensis sp. nov. and L.ventripunctata , as well as three other sympatric species ( L.shangsiensis , L.shiwandashanensis , and L...

In recent years, the idea has flourished that plants emit and perceive sound and could even be capable of exchanging information through the acoustic channel. While research into plant bioacoustics is still in its infancy, with potentially fascinating discoveries awaiting ahead, here we show that the current knowledge is not conclusive. While plants do emit sounds under biotic and abiotic stresses such as drought, these sounds are high-pitched, of low intensity, and propagate only to a short distance. Most studies suggesting plant sensitivity to airborne sound actually concern the perception of substrate vibrations from the soil or plant part...

The recognition of bird species through the analysis of their vocalizations is a crucial aspect of wildlife conservation and biodiversity monitoring. In this study, the acoustic features of Certhia americana, Certhia brachydactyla, and Certhia familiaris were calculated including the Acoustic complexity index (ACI), Acoustic diversity index (ADI), Acoustic evenness index (AEI), Bioacoustic index (BI), Median of the amplitude envelop (MA), and Normalized Difference Soundscape Index (NDSI). Three machine learning models, Random Forest (RF), Support Vector Machine (SVM), and Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost), were constructed...

Vibroacoustic signalling is one of the dominant strategies of animal communication, especially in small invertebrates. Among insects, the order Hemiptera displays a staggering diversity of vibroacoustic organs and is renowned for possessing biomechanically complex elastic recoil devices such as tymbals and snapping organs that enable robust vibrational communication. However, our understanding of the evolution of hemipteran elastic recoil devices is hindered by the absence of relevant data in the phylogenetically important group known as moss bugs (Coleorrhyncha), which produce substrate-borne vibrations through an unknown mechanism...