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
No showcases have been added to this group yet.
- @taylorcasalena
- | she, her, hers
sustainability strategist, naturalist, consultant
- 1 Resources
- 1 Discussions
- 6 Groups
- 0 Resources
- 0 Discussions
- 7 Groups
- @VijayKarthick
- | He/Him
Nature Conservation Foundation
I'm a PhD student from India, interested in utilising bioacoustics and technology to answer ecological questions. I'm a frog nerd :)
- 0 Resources
- 2 Discussions
- 9 Groups
Technologist and Visual storyteller focusing on social, conservations issues.
- 1 Resources
- 47 Discussions
- 17 Groups
- @Valentin_Stefan
- | He/Him
Interested in emerging technologies related to camera traps for pollinators
- 0 Resources
- 4 Discussions
- 18 Groups
- 1 Resources
- 1 Discussions
- 11 Groups
Interested in bioacoustics
- 0 Resources
- 0 Discussions
- 14 Groups
- @NG
- | She
I am a Conservationist and Ornithologist passionate about biodiversity conservation and environmental sustainability.
- 0 Resources
- 1 Discussions
- 7 Groups
A Wildlife Biologist interested in Environment Assessment and Restoration, In-situ and Ex-situ strategies, Technologies used in Conservation and Illegal Wildlife Trade.
- 0 Resources
- 16 Discussions
- 15 Groups
Clemson University
- 0 Resources
- 0 Discussions
- 7 Groups
- @WyattB
- | He / him / his
Data science and ML specialist
- 0 Resources
- 2 Discussions
- 7 Groups
Biologist who is new to the world of bioacoustics and ecological restoration.
- 0 Resources
- 0 Discussions
- 1 Groups
InsectSet459 - the first large-scale open dataset of insect sounds, featuring 26,399 audio clips from 459 species of Orthoptera and Cicadidae.
24 March 2025
Careers
Naturalis is looking for a postdoc in AI for Ultrasonic Bioacoustic Monitoring
24 March 2025
Careers
Postdoctoral opening in the Bioacoustics and Behavioral Ecology Lab at Syracuse University
14 March 2025
Funding
BirdCLEF+ 2025
Alex Rood
Species identification from audio, focused on birds, amphibians, mammals and insects from the Middle Magdalena Valley of Colombia.
12 March 2025
Careers
Postdoc in bird modelling and remote sensing
Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute
Building species-specific habitat models for forest bird species using state of the art methods and remote sensing layers
28 February 2025
Funding
Osa Conservation is launching our inaugural cohort of the ‘Susan Wojcicki Research Fellowship’ for 2025, worth up to $15,000 per awardee (award value dependent on project length and number of awards given each year)....
10 February 2025
Article
workshop introduced participants to the power of bioinformatics and next-generation sequencing (NGS) in conservation biology.
10 February 2025
Link
New paper - "acoupi integrates audio recording, AI-based data processing, data management, and real-time wireless messaging into a unified and configurable framework. We demonstrate the flexibility of acoupi by...
7 February 2025
Careers
Live and work in sunny San Diego for the summer, contributing to engineering projects as they relate to conservation technology.
6 February 2025
Careers
SDZWA Conservation Tech Summer Fellowship
Kyra Swanson
The Conservation Technology Laboratory within the Population Sustainability department is seeking two fellows for summer 2025
5 February 2025
Careers
PhD-project Benefit of Broadleaves for Bats, Birds and Beetles
Tim R. Hofmeester
Fully funded 4 year doctoral student position
16 December 2024
Careers
AI Researcher / Doctoral Candidate
Thiago Gouvêa
Develop state-of-the-art interactive ML-based tools for biodiverstiy conservation and related applications
11 December 2024
August 2025
event
Louisa Richmond-Coggan
September 2025
October 2025
event
Vanesa Reyes
November 2025
September 2024
event
Vanesa Reyes
event
Marius Miron
event
Vanesa Reyes
64 Products
Recently updated products
| Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hi Iqbal,I'm sure you could get some good feedback on this from XC users on this, particularly on the subject of protocols, recording settings, etc. So maybe a nice idea to post... |
|
Acoustics | 8 months ago | |
| Super interesting work! Maybe one day you will also be able to have a career as a science fiction writer. Lot of interesting outcomes can come of this. ❤️ |
|
Acoustics, Data management and processing tools, Early Career | 8 months 2 weeks ago | |
| It's still a bit early days. For nocturnal flight calls (which are the majority of the mysteries) the recordings are generally of poor quality and the model doesn't find anything... |
|
Acoustics | 8 months 2 weeks ago | |
| I think lithium AAs would be ideal, but since it's not likely to be super cold I think you could get away with Alkaline if you're ok with somewhat reduced runtimes. |
|
Acoustics | 8 months 3 weeks ago | |
| Hi WILDLABSWe have been working on a macOS version of PAMGuard and it would be great if some folk here in the community would like to give... |
|
Acoustics, Software Development | 8 months 3 weeks ago | |
| The figures come very close to the primo mic. When I looked into this a couple of years ago I don’t recall seeing one come this close. |
|
Acoustics | 8 months 4 weeks ago | |
| This is a thread for anyone who has questions about AI for Conservation Office Hours 2025.We're once again teaming up with Dan Morris from... |
|
Acoustics, AI for Conservation, Camera Traps, Community Base, Geospatial | 9 months ago | |
| Okay, super! Really nice thread you started. It’s great to get these insights.With my own experiments, as you mentioned, accuracy is very good within the polygons. But in addition... |
|
Acoustics | 9 months ago | |
| The PCB mount terminals are actually quite robust and paired with a lock washer and something that would better secure the nylon (e.g., a piece of flat grooved plastic to add... |
|
Acoustics, Conservation Dogs, Sensors | 9 months ago | |
| I guess, you know USB digital audio | Android Open Source Project. from which I conclude it should be possible, however, my Android experience is also zero. |
|
Acoustics | 9 months 1 week ago | |
| PCBs back, working great but right now a custom firmware build ("force_27"), need to make sure all is well with the standard build. This of course a non-switch version. |
|
Acoustics | 9 months 2 weeks ago | |
| Hi Brett, I am interested in developing really low cost multi channel underwater acoustic recorders. Can you tell me a bit more about the board and stuff you were using... |
|
Build Your Own Data Logger Community, Acoustics, Camera Traps, Climate Change, East Africa Community, Marine Conservation, Open Source Solutions, Protected Area Management Tools | 9 months 3 weeks ago |
The WILDLABS Variety Hour: March 2023 - YouTube
30 March 2023 4:04pm
Global shortage of Raspberry Pis - What are the alternatives
3 November 2022 10:27am
29 March 2023 10:13am
UPDATE: The Banana Pi didnt work out for us as it was not possible to track back all the components and ensure that they were responsibly sourced. The Rock board did work for us and we were able to port our system onto this. We will be rolling out units using this over the summer. It also looks like Raspberry Pis are coming back on line and we were able to secure a bulk order for deliver mid-summer
29 March 2023 10:14am
Yes, but for our needs that are not powerful enough
Exploring storage options for mass data collection
22 March 2023 3:20am
22 March 2023 7:36pm
Hi Adam!
I mostly live within the ecoacoustics space so I'll just speak on the hydrophone part of your request; Arbimon is a free web/cloud-based platform with unlimited storage for audio files. We've got an uploader app as well for mass-uploading lots of files. There's also a bunch of spectrogram visualization/annotation tools and analysis workflows available. It's AWS running under the hood.
I have some experience working directly with AWS & Microsoft Azure, and I've found personally that AWS was more user-friendly and intuitive for the (fairly simplistic) kinds of tasks I've done.
27 March 2023 5:23am
Alex Rogers: Acoustic Devices for Biodiversity Monitoring — Smart Forests Atlas
24 March 2023 12:28pm
Alex Rogers: Acoustic Devices for Biodiversity Monitoring — Smart Forests Atlas
In this radio episode, we speak to Alex Rogers, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Oxford. Interviewers: Max Ritts and Michelle Westerlaken Producer: Harry Murdoch Listen on Apple and Spotify.
Catch up with The Variety Hour: March 2023
23 March 2023 11:09am
Using acoustic monitoring to track infectious disease risk
8 March 2023 1:29pm
Proposals wanted for Innovation in Practice
6 March 2023 10:34pm
USD500 available for your workshop
6 March 2023 1:30pm
AudioMoth and Song Meter Micro battery life tests
16 February 2023 4:09pm
24 February 2023 2:20pm
Hi Justin, looks like the link is not working!
24 February 2023 5:23pm
Should work now - a stray full stop snuck in there!
26 February 2023 2:58pm
Hi Justin,
Dropping in a question you've received over on twitter:
Hi! Nope, this report doesn't test SD card size or any other parameters like read/write speed or brand.
— Tessa Rhinehart (@TessaRhinehart) March 7, 2023
Use of passive acoustic monitoring methods to estimate poaching pressure of European turtle doves in Greece (Ionian Islands)
24 February 2023 12:54pm
The Arbimon newsletter is back!
23 February 2023 11:34pm
New guidance - Good practice for ecoacoustic monitoring
23 February 2023 10:31am
Acoustic monitoring fieldwork positions in Puerto Rico
22 February 2023 2:41pm
Texas Chapter of The Wildlife Society’s Annual Meeting 2023
20 February 2023 10:56pm
Research Assistants in Kitzes Lab
16 February 2023 4:12pm
Developing Two Non-invasive Survey Methods for Freshwater Ecosystems: Environmental DNA and Ecoacoustics
10 February 2023 10:41am
Swift Software Developer - Lab of Ornithology
10 February 2023 10:38am
Research Associate - Machine Learning (Underwater Sound)
10 February 2023 10:19am
Cleaning audiomoth circuit board
17 January 2023 11:42am
28 January 2023 5:40am
I'd also add that if the boards are just dirty or dusty, you can just remove all batteries, then wash with a toothbrush and water. Air dry (or use compressed air which speeds things up greatly) and then spot clean areas that need solvent with isopropanol as Harold mentioned. Also if you don't have access to conformal coating, you can also use a non-conductive clear lacquer. The conformal coating covers all the components and prevents short circuits due to conductive water (ie: salt water) or other contaminants. However if you do use a conformal coating, make sure all cables are connected first and the device is in the exact state that it will be deployed in. Also don't conformal coat the battery connectors since you'll want to change out batteries periodically.
2 February 2023 8:13am
Hi Akiba,
thanks for your this great advice! I used the conformal coating on parts
of the PCB with exposed metal but was has hesitent using it on the "backside" with
all the resistors and transistors. Also what about the "back" of the microfon. Might this side be coated?
Do you have any experience with coatings @alex_rogers
Greetings,
Robin
9 February 2023 9:56pm
Cleaning the water damaged audiomoth boards is in full swing:
Left before, right after cleaning
Technical Officer – IMOS Animal Tracking Facility
7 February 2023 12:30pm
Commercially available connected audio sensors
2 February 2023 3:08pm
2 February 2023 3:55pm
Hi!
I am not aware of any such connected loggers/recorders but they would be nice.
The AudioMoths have been revolutionary in providing audologging at a low cost but they take a lot of "data muling" (carrying SD cards in and out of the field sites) and swapping of batteries.
Cheers,
2 February 2023 7:50pm
Hi Lars, thanks for the response. We are using lots of Song Meter Micro's atm and they have proved to be resilient. Just need something which doesn't involve going on site regularly - but get the data off.
3 February 2023 7:04pm
Rainforest Connection's (RFCx) Guardian devices may be of interest. They are solar-powered and have connectivity options for Wifi, GSM and satellite transfer. They've previously been used for detecting e.g., gunshots or chainsaws (using edge computing) and then sending positive detections/alerts to folks on the ground. RFCx also hosts Arbimon, a free, no-code software platform that facilitates analysis of audio data as well. Happy to chat more if you'd like to talk further about it!
Job: Building a network of conservation tech across continents
2 February 2023 1:50pm
Consultancy opportunity: Wildlife monitoring specialist
31 January 2023 11:26am
AI for Forest Elephants Challenge
25 January 2023 3:34pm
Pandas & Prose with Karen Bakker and David Thau
19 January 2023 11:55pm
Apply Now: AI for Conservation Office Hours
18 January 2023 5:15pm
International Congress for Conservation Biology
16 January 2023 2:53pm
28 March 2023 9:37pm
Have you considered Arduinos?