The emerging significance of bioacoustics in animal species conservation

By Paola Laiolo. 2010

325 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This review reports on the effects of human activities on animal acoustic signals published in the literature from 1970 to 2009. Almost 5% of the studies on variation in animal communication tested or hypothesised on human impacts, and showed that habitat fragmentation, direct human disturbance, introduced diseases, urbanization, hunting, chemical and noise pollution may challenge animal acoustic behaviour. Although acoustic adaptations to anthropogenic habitats have been documented, human impacts have most often generated neutral variation or potential maladaptive responses. Negative impacts have been postulated in the sexual signals of fishes, amphibians, birds, and mammals; these are concerning as any maladaptive alteration of sexual behaviour may have direct bearings on breeding success and ultimately population growth rate. Acoustic communication also facilitates other vital behaviours influenced by human-driven perturbations. Bat and cetacean echolocation, for instance, is disrupted by noise pollution, whereas bird and mammal alarming is also affected by introduced diseases and hunting. Mammal social signals are sensitive to noise pollution and hunting, and birds selecting habitats by means of acoustic cues are especially vulnerable to habitat loss. Anthropogenic intervention in these cases may have a negative impact on individual survival, recruitment and group cohesion, limiting rescue-effects and triggering Allee effects. Published evidence shows that acoustic variation may be used as an early-warning indicator of perturbations even when not directly affecting individual fitness. Acoustic signalling can be studied in a broad range of ecosystems, can be recorded, analyzed, synthesised and played back with relative ease and limited economic budget, and is sensitive to many types of impacts, thus can have great conservation significance.

Subfields: Developmental Biology, Ecology, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2db73befb01d7271e9c8eebfe4eb07166588a04b

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In Ecology

In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

Citations in the corpus

Behavioural responses of wildlife to urban environments (2013, background): “This, in turn, may have direct negative influences on reproduction and consequently population growth (Laiolo, 2010).”
Passive acoustic monitoring as a potential tool to survey animal and ecosystem processes in freshwater environments (2019, background): “Noise pol‐ lution can result in injuries such as hearing loss, internal bleeding, or even death (Popper & Hastings, 2009; Popper & Hawkins, 2019; Popper et al., 2005), mask communication signals (Fletcher, 2007), or affect population sizes and density (Laiolo, 2010).”
Juvenile coral reef fish use sound to locate habitats (2011, background): “A recent review of the response of animals to acoustic pollution revealed a range of common biological impacts across a wide range of taxa, including interference with acoustic orientation and communication (Laiolo 2010).”
Computational bioacoustics with deep learning: a review and roadmap (2021, background): “Bioacoustics—the study of animal sound—offers a fascinating window into animal behaviour, and also a valuable evidence source for monitoring biodiversity (Marler & Slabbekoorn, 2004; Laiolo, 2010; Marques et al., 2012; Brown & Riede, 2017).”
The use of bioacoustics in anuran taxonomy: theory, terminology, methods and recommendations for best practice. (2017, background): “Automated recorders and signal processing are helpful in bioacoustical monitoring approaches (e.g., Terry et al. 2005; Tripp & Otter 2006; Bardeli et al. 2010; Laiolo 2010; Blumstein et al. 2011) and thus in ecological studies and conservation.”
Chirping up the Right Tree: Incorporating Biological Taxonomies into Deep Bioacoustic Classifiers (2020, background): “7) Coarse Medium Fine [152] [113] [274] [390] [232] [112] [1,431] [73] [91] [109] [13] [204] [13] [323] Other (Fine) (0.”
Acoustic indices for biodiversity assessments: Analyses of bias based on simulated bird assemblages and recommendations for field surveys (2015, unknown): “The use of acoustic tools in biodiversity conservation is not new (Batista and Gaunt, 1997), but it has recently increased, especially as part of the management of large wild areas (Dumyahn and Pijanowski, 2011; Farina, 2014; Laiolo, 2010).”
Bioacoustic monitoring of animal vocal behavior for conservation (2019, background): “…& Blumstein, 2000), while recent studies have commonly examined behavioral responses to anthropogenic impacts (Barber, Crooks, & Fristrup, 2010; Laiolo, 2010; Owens, Stec, & O'Hatnick, 2012; Shannon, Angeloni, Wittemyer, Fristrup, & Crooks, 2014; Slabbekoorn & Ripmeester, 2008; Templeton,…”