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
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EcoFirst
Biologist and naturalist involved in NGO's activities as well as profesionnally
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- @AudreyLooby
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University of Victoria
I am Banting postdoctoral fellow at the University of Victoria, focusing on coastal soundscape ecology and underwater noise pollution. I am also one of the co-leads of FishSounds.net.
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Machine Learning Researcher & Nature Photographer. Building conservation tech for biodiversity monitoring at Wildlife Insights.
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Society for Conservation GIS
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Department of Conservation (New Zealand)
I work with the Terrestrial Biodiversity Team at the Department of Conservation, New Zealand. I'm interested in machine learning and spatial data science.
wekaResearch.com | doc.govt.nz
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GreenLab
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World Wide Fund for Nature/ World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
WWF-Tanzania GIS Specialist/Developer/Trainer
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PhD Student | Cornell University | Smithsonian Institution; My focus is in computational ecology within fishery acoustics
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As a fresh electrical engineer, I am passionate about leveraging technology for biodiversity monitoring, logging, and poaching detection in tropical regions.
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Careers
Postdoc: Noise Impacts on Marine Animals
Carly Batist
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
Link
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...
1 September 2022
Careers
Seeking interested individuals with qualifications and educational background and experience in marine species biology/ecology (marine mammals, sea turtles, fish, seabirds, etc.); with skills in applied scientific study...
31 August 2022
Careers
Acoustics Modeler & Analyst, Marine Acoustics Inc
Stephanie O'Donnell
Marine Acoustics, Inc. (MAI) is seeking an Acoustic Modeler and Analyst to assist us in the analysis of underwater acoustic system performance and the effect underwater acoustic transmissions have on the marine...
30 August 2022
Careers
Conservation Technology Research Internship
Meredith Palmer
Boost cons tech capacity at an international NGO! Fauna & Flora International is offering a paid three-month internship to consolidate and share best practices for the application of emerging hardware and software...
26 August 2022
Link
First seen on Diego Llusia's Twitter - https://twitter.com/DiegoLlusia/status/1561275951463415808?s=20&t=5Z-DoKbO0qGLZcSKStCtPQ
22 August 2022
Article
Ceres Wild Rhino application
Kim Lane
An update on Ceres Tags products that are being used in conservation
22 August 2022
Funding
Product Grant Program
Wildlife Acoustics
Wildlife Acoustics' grant program to receive bioacoustic tools and software is now accepting applications. Apply for up to $4,000 worth of products and software licenses.
9 August 2022
Careers
Opportunity: Postdoctoral Researcher
Ellie Warren
Gavin Jones is seeking a postdoctoral researcher to join his movemebt ecology and bioacoustics work focusing on spotted owls.
4 August 2022
Careers
Earth Species Project - Senior AI Research Scientist
Andrea Austin
The Earth Species Project (ESP) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to decoding animal communication and translating non-human language.
15 July 2022
Article
New papers on passive acoustic monitoring
Carly Batist
PAM & transfer learning, defining occupancy in surveys, effects of anthropogenic noise on fish, soundscapes to track ecosystem recovery, detecting sharks with echosounders, using PAMGuard to detect marine mammals
21 June 2022
Careers
Hiring Acoustic Ecology Postdoctoral Fellow
Sara Petrita Bombaci
The Sound and Light Ecology Team, a collaboration between Colorado State University and National Park Service scientists, is hiring an acoustic ecology postdoctoral fellow in Fort Collins, CO.
16 June 2022
August 2025
event
Louisa Richmond-Coggan
September 2025
October 2025
event
Vanesa Reyes
November 2025
September 2024
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Recently updated products
| Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thank you! |
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Acoustics | 1 year 9 months ago | |
| A few more! |
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Acoustics | 1 year 9 months ago | |
| Hi, thanks so much for getting back. You can reach me at j.insupp@fh-cuas.at |
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Acoustics | 1 year 10 months 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 | 1 year 10 months ago | |
| I second that! |
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Acoustics | 1 year 10 months 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 | 1 year 11 months 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 | 1 year 11 months ago | |
| Steve Simpson (on behalf of collaborator @MilesParsons) joined our June Variety Hour to give a report from the Wolrd Oceans Passive... |
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Acoustics, Marine Conservation | 2 years 1 month ago | |
| Hi Tom, Seeed Studio also offers manufacturing services. Check out more info on the website here :) |
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Acoustics | 2 years 1 month ago | |
| Carly, that would be great! Thanks! I work with soundscapes and love the work of Rainforest Connection! I'll send you an email (@CUNY) to coordinate! |
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Acoustics, AI for Conservation, Conservation Tech Training and Education, Drones, eDNA & Genomics, Emerging Tech, Geospatial | 2 years 2 months ago | |
| Hi Donya! You might check out the Conservation Tech Directory to see what projects/organizations/tools best align with your interests and skills. |
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Acoustics, AI for Conservation, Camera Traps, Drones | 2 years 2 months ago | |
| I am exploring project ideas to monitor marine reef systems using passive acoustic monitoring and am curious what software people prefer... |
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Acoustics | 2 years 3 months ago |
Conservation Tech Directory - new update!
29 August 2022 2:38pm
26 September 2022 10:07pm
Thanks so much!!
Audio Data Across Domains (AudioXD) Workshop
6 June 2022 3:52pm
1 September 2022 11:46am
Great minds Alice!! I'd actually sent your workshop to justin separately this morning because of the alignment with audioxd.
As for joining things up globally, I think you're right. Looking at all that's happening in the bioacoustics community right now, seeing all these sort of events, what's happening with the bioacoustics stack exchange, and hearing the conversations that are happening - and it feels like such an opportune time to find a way to support all of these efforts link up and join forces. We have some plans on this front that will mean we'll be able to provide coordination support to help, and I'm interested to hear what people think is needed.
Steph
1 September 2022 3:21pm
Thanks Alice, and great to hear from you and Steph about the work that you all are leading. It would be great to follow up on the idea of doing more international collaboration in the ecoacoustics/bioacoustics space. If you're interested, feel free to drop me a line to catch up sometime about ideas.
Also, something of a side note, but we'll also have a Wildlabs blog post up summarizing the AudioXD meeting soon, hopefully.
26 September 2022 9:22pm
I love the idea of increasing international collaboration and inclusion within acoustic monitoring! I think there particularly needs to be more collab'ing between the terrestrial & aquatic/marine acoustic monitoring folks!
It would be great for more virtual/hybrid events to foster such international inclusion, so anything to facilitate that sort of online platform would be awesome!
There is also the new Bioacoustics Stack Exchange for Q&A. And the upcoming IBAC conference in Japan next October (2023).
Ecological Forecasting Initiative's data analysis webinar series
26 September 2022 6:50pm
New paper: A novel method for identifying coded tags recorded on aquatic acoustic monitoring systems
26 September 2022 2:11pm
A novel method for identifying coded tags recorded on aquatic acoustic monitoring systems | Environmental Monitoring and Assessment
Aquatic biotelemetry increasingly relies on using acoustic transmitters (‘tags’) that enable passive detection of tagged animals using fixed or
Mangrove soundscape
27 August 2022 4:57pm
29 August 2022 2:47pm
You might check out the devices listed in the Conservation Tech Directory - you can search for 'acoustic recorder' or 'ARU' or something like that.
The most common off-the-shelf models (other than Frontier Labs' BARLTs mentioned above😊) are Open Acoustic Devices Audiomoths & Hydromoths (which may be particularly useful for you since they come in completely watertight cases that can be stuck underwater for deployments), Wildlife Acoustics' SongMeter series, and Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Swift units.
30 August 2022 10:10pm
Camilo--
Are you interested only in airborne sounds or do you want to deploy hydrophones? That decision would inform a lot of other decisions about your purchase of equipment, as would having a clearer picture of your budget.
23 September 2022 5:39pm
Hi there Camilo,
What an interesting project! If you are looking for a lower cost, but effective tools for acoustic monitoring you might want to look into two options:
SoundTraps - are very commonly used and perform quite well:
SonarPoints - these are also a great instrument option:
page/sonarpoint | Desert Star Systems
The SonarPoint system is the third generation of Desert Stars passive underwater acoustics monitoring toolkits.
Senior Conservation Technology Expert Position (Consultancy) with the Global Wildlife Program
22 September 2022 5:35pm
New paper: Passive acoustic monitoring as a tool to investigate the spatial distribution of invasive alien species
21 September 2022 2:07am
New paper: Evaluation of a coastal acoustic buoy for cetacean detections, bearing accuracy and exclusion zone monitoring
20 September 2022 3:00pm
New paper: Soundscapes show disruption across the diel cycle in human modified tropical landscapes
20 September 2022 2:40pm
WILDLABS Journal Club
15 September 2022 11:42am
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?
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
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
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
23 September 2022 5:26pm
Congrats on the milestone Carly and Gracie!