Acoustic sensors enable efficient and non-invasive monitoring of a wide range of species, including many that are difficult to monitor in other ways. Although they were initially limited in application scope largely due to cost and hardware constraints, the development of low-cost, open-source models like the Audiomoth in recent years has increased access immensely and opened up new avenues of research. For example, some teams are using them to identify illicit human activities through the detection of associated sounds, like gunshots, vehicles, or chainsaws (e.g. OpenEars).
With this relatively novel dimension of wildlife monitoring rapidly advancing in both marine and terrestrial systems, it is crucial that we identify and share information about the utility and constraints of these sensors to inform efforts. A recent study identified advancements in hardware and machine learning applications, as well as early development of acoustic biodiversity indicators, as factors facilitating progress in the field. In terms of limitations, the authors highlight insufficient reference sound libraries, a lack of open-source audio processing tools, and a need for standardization of survey and analysis protocols. They also stress the importance of collaboration in moving forward, which is precisely what this group will aim to facilitate.
If you're new to acoustic monitoring and want to get up to speed on the basics, check out these beginner's resources and conversations from across the WILDLABS platform:
Three Resources for Beginners:
- Listening to Nature: The Emerging Field of Bioacoustics, Adam Welz
- Ecoacoustics and Biodiversity Monitoring, RSEC Journal
- Monitoring Ecosystems through Sound: The Present and Future of Passive Acoustics, Ella Browning and Rory Gibb
Three Forum Threads for Beginners:
- AudioMoth user guide | Tessa Rhinehart
- Audiomoth and Natterjack Monitoring (UK) | Stuart Newson
- Help with analysing bat recordings from Audiomoth | Carlos Abrahams
Three Tutorials for Beginners:
- "How do I perform automated recordings of bird assemblages?" | Carlos Abrahams, Tech Tutors
- "How do I scale up acoustic surveys with Audiomoths and automated processing?" | Tessa Rhinehart, Tech Tutors
- Acoustic Monitoring | David Watson, Ruby Lee, Andy Hill, and Dimitri Ponirakis, Virtual Meetups
Want to know more about acoustic monitoring and learn from experts in the WILDLABS community? Jump into the discussion in our Acoustic Monitoring group!
Header image: Carly Batist
GreenLab
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Over 35 years of experience in biodiversity conservation worldwide, largely focused on forests, rewilding and conservation technology. I run my own business assisting nonprofits and agencies in the conservation community
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Biologist I consider myself a data scientist with a passion for nature and with an extensive experience in species distribution modeling, handling large data sets from different sources such as gbif, eBird, xeno-canto, Worldclim, Terraclimate, ocean color e NASA among others. But
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Founder & CEO of we.are.tohorā, creating a community that cares about whales, the environment and each other.
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- @bumbleben
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Junior dev in a bioacoustics startup, interested in all forms of remote sensing and biologging
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Five articles that include conservation tech published at Mongabay
20 October 2022
*New closing date!* WILDLABS and Fauna & Flora International are seeking an early career conservationist for 12-month paid internship position to grow and support the Southeast Asia regional community in our global...
19 October 2022
The Institute for Bird Populations (IBP) seeks a biologist to assist with an autonomous recording unit (ARU) bird monitoring project at California off-highway vehicle recreation parks and other ARU monitoring projects...
19 October 2022
The Yang Center is seeking a Software/Firmware Developer responsible for designing, developing, improving, and maintaining embedded systems to acquire and process bioacoustic data. The
6 October 2022
A collaborative and cross-disciplinary meeting of audio data scientists spawns creative research collaborations
3 October 2022
Careers
The Senior Conservation Technology Specialist will be responsible for providing technical advice and capacity development to GWP project teams on conservation technology, distilling challenges and lessons from project...
22 September 2022
The European Biodiversity Partnership Biodiversa+, co-funded by the European Union, has launched a call for research proposals on “Improved transnational monitoring of biodiversity and ecosystem change for science and...
14 September 2022
Careers
The BirdNet team are seeking to fill three roles, including an Ecologist, Data scientist and an Embedded Systems Engineer based in Germany.
9 September 2022
The Purdue University Center for Global Soundscapes is seeking a new postdoctoral fellow to work on a project at the intersection of soundscape monitoring and remote sensing / geospatial data
8 September 2022
Mystic Aquarium is seeking a Postdoctoral Investigator (PDI) to address noise impacts on aquatic species, particularly beluga whales, seals and turtles. This project will develop & carry out research to address...
1 September 2022
July 2024
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Recently updated products
Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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You're awesome Tim, thank you! However, we ordered another from GroupGets yesterday and it's arriving tomorrow, so we (should) be good to go : ) Now if I can only get... |
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Acoustics | 6 months 3 weeks ago | |
Brilliant - thank you.! Great idea about the screen too - I'm replacing some of them monthly so may try that myself. Have you found any issues with the mesh generating... |
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Acoustics | 6 months 3 weeks ago | |
Hi Vicki,I've sent you a private message. |
+1
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Acoustics | 7 months ago | |
Thank you! |
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Acoustics | 7 months ago | |
A few more! |
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Acoustics | 7 months 2 weeks ago | |
Hi, thanks so much for getting back. You can reach me at [email protected] |
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Acoustics | 7 months 2 weeks ago | |
Interesting! Hi Sean, sounds like an excellent project. Definitely talk with the Arbimon folks! As @carlybatist said, I am working with birds in the Peruvian Amazon, but in... |
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Acoustics | 7 months 3 weeks ago | |
Hi everyone, I wanted to provide an update on behalf of Wildlife Acoustics regarding some of these comments in this thread. As some of you may know, we have just announced... |
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Acoustics, Sensors | 7 months 3 weeks ago | |
I second that! |
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Acoustics | 8 months 1 week ago | |
I wish to share an update on my MSc thesis project, that contributes to the field of decoding animal communication. In my work I... |
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Acoustics, Data management and processing tools, Early Career | 8 months 3 weeks ago | |
Hi Wildlabbers!We were asked to share this opportunity to present at the upcoming Audiomoth conference:Presenters are urgently needed -... |
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Acoustics | 9 months 1 week ago | |
I've tested a Petterson ultrasonic microphone with a sample rate of 384khz and it works out of the box with this software as well. Would be cool to sound localize some bats. |
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Acoustics | 9 months 1 week ago |
New paper: Passive acoustic monitoring as a tool to investigate the spatial distribution of invasive alien species
21 September 2022 2:07am
Authors developed reproducible passive acoustic monitoring pipeline to rapidly provide baseline information on invasive alien species (IAS); found that IAS occurrence related to high levels of human disturbance.
New paper: Evaluation of a coastal acoustic buoy for cetacean detections, bearing accuracy and exclusion zone monitoring
20 September 2022 3:00pm
Authors "developed a three-hydrophone passive acoustic monitoring system that provides bearing information along with marine mammal detections to allow for informed management decisions in real-time."
New paper: Soundscapes show disruption across the diel cycle in human modified tropical landscapes
20 September 2022 2:40pm
Authors founds dawn & dusk choruses were lost/supressed in plantations, acoustic activity at dawn/dusk reduced in disturbed ecosystems compared to healthy forests.
WILDLABS Journal Club
15 September 2022 11:42am
15 September 2022 3:49pm
I have been waiting for journal club to come back!! 10000% down.
I agree with @StephODonnell, would love it to come back!!! And now that variety hour is happening, that's more of the "mix of things" that she mentioned anyways so I think that new format would be great.
Online Course – Introduction to Aquatic Acoustic Telemetry
14 September 2022 6:13pm
CFP - transnational biodiversity monitoring (from European Biodiversity Partnership)
14 September 2022 1:42pm
Join the BirdNET team!
9 September 2022 2:43pm
BOEM job openings
Postdoctoral Fellow in Soundscape Ecology at Purdue University
8 September 2022 4:12pm
Catch Up with the Variety Hour: September 2022
6 September 2022 12:31pm
Postdoc: Noise Impacts on Marine Animals
1 September 2022 9:25pm
New paper - 'soundClass: An automatic sound classification tool for biodiversity monitoring using machine learning'
1 September 2022 8:53pm
Silva et al -
- R package to train convolutional neural networks & employ them to classify sounds
- sound event classification pipeline, from annotating recordings to automating
trained networks
- case studies with bat & whale echolocation calls, bird songs
Solicitation of Interest: NAVFAC Atlantic Marine Resources
31 August 2022 7:28pm
Acoustics Modeler & Analyst, Marine Acoustics Inc
30 August 2022 9:45am
Conservation Technology Research Internship
26 August 2022 4:58pm
New paper: Acoustic indices as proxies for biodiversity: a meta-analysis
22 August 2022 4:03am
First seen on Diego Llusia's Twitter - https://twitter.com/DiegoLlusia/status/1561275951463415808?s=20&t=5Z-Do…
Ceres Wild Rhino application
22 August 2022 1:29am
29 September 2022 4:05am
Replacement acoustic membranes for Audiomoth case
31 May 2022 2:15pm
9 June 2022 11:35am
Hi carly,
You've probably seen this already as we tagged you, but I'm dropping it here in case anyone else is having the same issue!
We used the plastic from a stronger A4 plastic folder-case taped. Don't know the type, the one we keep our fieldnotes...
— Attila D. Sandor (@adsandor) June 9, 2022
9 June 2022 1:09pm
@alex_rogers jumping in too:
@groupgetscom has the original vent fitted to the case in stock and available individually - https://t.co/IozIRPVPOS. There is also a UK-based specialist who can provide small numbers of vents - https://t.co/wrQy80Xx0I.
— Alex Rogers (@alex_rogers_cs) June 9, 2022
20 August 2022 9:49am
Alex,
which one of those
https://selectronix.co.uk/collections/waterproof-acoustic-vents
would be the appropriate for the Audiomoth case?
Agus
Looking for plant and animal eco-acoustics specialists in the Alps
10 August 2022 3:01pm
10 August 2022 3:24pm
Hey maya,
If you're free - come along to our Variety Hour call next week and ask folks there too. We're keeping the last 10 mins open for people to jump up and put out calls like this!
Steph
Catch Up with the WILDLABS Variety Hour: August 2022
10 August 2022 11:44am
Product Grant Program
9 August 2022 7:09pm
African Bioacoustics Conference 2022
5 August 2022 3:08pm
IBAC Online Symposium 2022 - Frontiers in Bioacoustics
5 August 2022 2:42pm
Opportunity: Postdoctoral Researcher
4 August 2022 9:08pm
HydroMoth GroupGets campaign
28 June 2022 11:07am
20 July 2022 3:06am
From Alex on Twitter:
Yes. The HydroMoth has the same microphone and firmware as the standard AudioMoth which is widely used for terrestrial conservation. You would need the standard green case which has a waterproof acoustic vent.
20 July 2022 5:57pm
@Andrew_Hill Out of curiosity, since this campaign reached its goal & is ending soon, is it possible to turn the remaining Hydromoth units that didn't sell into Audiomoths for a limited GroupGets? I understand that Hydromoths can be used terrestrially as well, but they are more expensive than the last Audiomoth campaigns have been by $50+ so just wanted to see if Audiomoths would still be cheaper. Just trying to figure out if I should buy more Hydromoths or wait until Audiomoths start selling again (ends up being a trade-off between cost and time basically).
31 July 2022 5:20pm
@Andrew_Hill I wonder if you could let us know more about the time keeping difference btw the regular AudioMoth and the HydroMoth (which is said to do better)?
Bioacoustics Stack Exchange has reached the public beta stage!
28 July 2022 3:14pm
Looking for specialists in eco-acoustics (Alp region) for Documentary
18 July 2022 5:17pm
Earth Species Project - Senior AI Research Scientist
15 July 2022 6:40pm
CIEEM 2022 Summer Conference
12 July 2022 12:33am
Renaming files with incorrect timestamps
28 June 2022 2:12am
4 July 2022 2:39pm
Hi Carly,
has your issue been resolved yet? Could you link the stackoverflow question maybe? Otherwise this seems like a few lines of python code may solve this. I could assist with this if required.
R is usually not the obvious choice for file level operations :)
5 July 2022 4:03pm
Just posting the link to the Bioacoustics Stack Exchange post where I asked this as well, some other people gave code as well (though I haven't had time to try it as it has been a holiday weekend here in the US).
8 July 2022 10:40pm
I don't know if this was resolved, but if you copy this code into a python file in the same folder as your .wav files and then run it, it should rename everything. Try testing it on a copy first in case something is off! This assumes that all devices are named "swift1" and all .wav files are in the same folder.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#Reset timestamps for passive acoustic recorders
import os
from datetime import datetime,timedelta
from time import strftime
#Set Path to where you placed this file - Should be placed in folder with all recordings
os.chdir(os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__)))
#Start Date YYYY-MONTH-DAY and Time HR:MIN:SEC
start_date = "2022-06-17"
start_time= "T09:30:00"
curr_time = start_date+start_time
time = datetime.fromisoformat(curr_time)
incby = timedelta(minutes=20)
#For all .wav files in folder, set name to updated YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS and the increment by 20 minutes.
for file in os.listdir():
tnameform = "swift1_"+time.strftime("%Y%m%d_%H%M%S.wav")
if file[-4:] == ".wav":
os.rename(file,tnameform)
time = time + incby
15 September 2022 12:17pm
Ah Journal club - this was a lot of fun but a little chaotic. We've been wondering if we should bring it back with a slightly different format. ie we all agree on a paper to read before rather than bringing a mix of things to present. What does everyone think? Is anyone else keen? Is there a format you'd suggest we use?