1. Acoustic Monitoring Detection Part - I ADVANCED LEC 06 WILDLIFE TECHNIQUES University of Rio Grande Donald P. Althoff, Ph.D.

2. Why Acoustic Monitoring? Some species are _______________—and therefore difficult to detect when active Some species reside in _________________—and therefore difficult to detect 24/7 (or 12/7…6/7) is not feasible with just “human” observation— therefore _________________________ to “detect” with high degree of precision and accuracy offers a reasonable alternative _________________!!!!!

3. What Improvements in Last 5-10 Years Relative to Acoustic Monitoring Equipment? Equipment becoming more ______________ (aka weather-resistant) Higher capacity _____________ (think memory cards...from 516K a decade ago to 16-32 gigs+ now) Advances in programmability for ______________ monitoring over a 24-hour cycle, 7-day week, etc. Advances in ________________…for data processing and species ID

4. What Species to Acoustic Monitor/Study? Bats--most obvious Birds Mammals Frogs/Toads

5. What Are Some Major Challenges Remaining? _______________ Species ID (think bats) Matching calls with __________________________ (think bats, birds, and mammals)…what do the vocalizations mean? _________ of field units __________________ required to process/verify massive data files generated

6. Basics: How Individual Can We Get? Bats Birds Mammals Anurans As of today…..____ individual animal ID As of today….._________ individual males based on song quality As of today…..____ individual animal ID

7. Birds: Individual Variation Adelaide’s Warblers (Puerto Rico) See handout

8. Stuff to chase…. https://www.aba.org/birding/v41n3p18w1.html individual variation in a bird’s song…something we can investigate with acoustic recordings: slowdown, visualize, analyze https://www.aba.org/birding/v41n3p18w1.html Etc.

9. Not all Acoustic Monitoring is Ultrasonic (see “range” next slide) _______ - yes Most others (frogs, flying squirrels, birds, etc.) are in ranges we (or most humans) can detect without aid of “special” equipment. These are usually stored as “______” files that do not require special software to listen to. Regardless of file type, __________ does require special software

10. Sound Basics INFRA SOUND Human ULTRA SOUND Over 20 kHz2 - 20 kHz

11. Key Points : “Some” SUMMARY COMMENTS We are just scratching the surface on use of acoustic monitoring in WILDLIFE studies and/or monitoring Has ________________ if we can a) figure out what we are recording and/or listening to b) for species ID (think bats mostly), recognize limitations of auto ID software (we’ll explore this more) c) have trained (or willing to learn) biologists/technicians to use analysis software d) can continue to see cost reductions in equipment cost (we’ll explore this more) Major advantage: _________________