- Separating signal from noise in acoustic biodiversity surveys - 17/11/2020
- Sustainable redevelopment: visions of a post-lockdown world - 29/05/2020
- Pedagogy in Portugal - 07/02/2020
We can now use acoustic recording equipment to monitor all the sounds produced in an ecosystem. By recording and listening back to sound in this way, we hope to capture useful information about nature. One way to do this is using ‘acoustic indices’, mathematical summaries of the acoustic information contained in audio recordings. But how reliably do such indices actually reflect the biodiversity many of us are trying to monitor and understand?
In a new paper, published in the journal Ecological Indicators, we show how effective acoustic indices are as a measure of species richness — the number of different species at a particular time and location, just one of the ways we measure biodiversity. Our work is part of an ongoing collaboration between myself and Ian Donohue (Zoology, TCD) and researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology.
I counted the number of species from ~230 hours of recordings (it’s not as exciting as it sounds!) and compared these numbers with the values of several popular acoustic indices. We found that the indices struggled to reflect the number of species from recordings with heavy wind or rain, with human noise pollution, or when cicadas were producing their deafening chorus. Ultimately, this means we need to be careful how we interpret these indices in complex sonic environments, and we should plan our monitoring efforts accordingly to make the most effective use of these indices as estimates of biodiversity.
Publishing Research During a Global Pandemic
It’s a little strange having new research published during a global pandemic. But to quote Jeff Goldblum’s Dr. Ian Malcolm, “life, uh, finds a way”. One of the ways I’ve adapted to spreading the word about our paper is to take part in my very first Twitter conference. On Thursday 5 November, I sent 5 tweets as part of #TropiCon20, a Twitter conference co-organised by the British Ecological Society’s Tropical Ecology and Conservation special interest groups. The analytics from the conference show that over one million people saw the conference hashtag and at least one conference tweet during the 2-day event, so it seems like people are making the most of social media to get their science news and updates.
You can see my tweets including video, birdsong, and even the racket produced by those pesky cicadas here (no Twitter account needed): https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1324358613595496451.html.
I enjoyed testing these new methods for monitoring ecosystem and finding new ways to tell people about it!
VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnL3wcm0AKU&feature=emb_title