@article {53417, title = {Reproduction and metamorphosis in the Myristica Swamp tree frog, Mercurana myristicapalustris (Anura: Rhacophoridae)}, journal = {PeerJ}, volume = {6}, year = {2018}, month = {Jan-01-2018}, pages = {e5934}, abstract = {

The reproductive biology of the Myristica Swamp tree frog (Mercurana myristicapalus- tris), a monotypic rhacophorid frog endemic to the foothills of the Western Ghats mountains of India, has remained unknown since the description of the genus and species. We monitored individuals from parental generation amplexus to the comple- tion of offspring generation tadpole metamorphosis. Surprisingly, our observations revealed that this species exhibits many previously unknown characteristics, including the first ever record of the female, and a diverse call repertoire, consisting of five different call types (the functions of which remain incompletely known). We were also able to determine that reproductive activity peaked during the late pre-monsoon season, that males engaged in intraspecific aggressive encounters to occupy and to defend desirable territories, and that oviposition took place in terrestrial nests made by females. Embryonic development in the unattended nest was followed by tadpole development, which concluded within 40 days. The specific breeding mode employed by Mercurana, which restricts its range to the endangered Myristica swamp ecosystem, likely renders it susceptible to multiple threats, which should be considered jointly in future conservation planning.

}, keywords = {Amphibia, Animal Behavior, Conservation biology, Developmental Biology, ecology, India, Myristica swamp, Reproductive mode, Rhacophoridae, zoology}, doi = {10.7717/peerj.5934}, url = {https://peerj.com/articles/5934}, author = {Abraham, Robin Kurian and Mathew, Jobin Kuruvilla and Raju, David Valiaparampil and Rao, Ramprasad and Zachariah, Anil} } @article {47717, title = {On-Bird Sound Recordings: Automatic Acoustic Recognition of Activities and Contexts}, journal = {IEEE/ACM Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing}, volume = {25}, year = {2017}, month = {Jan-06-2017}, pages = {1193 - 1206}, abstract = {

We introduce a novel approach to studying animal behavior and the context in which it occurs, through the use of microphone backpacks carried on the backs of individual free-flying birds. These sensors are increasingly used by animal behavior researchers to study individual vocalizations of freely behaving animals, even in the field. However, such devices may record more than an animal\&$\#$39;s vocal behavior, and have the potential to be used for investigating specific activities (movement) and context (background) within which vocalizations occur. To facilitate this approach, we investigate the automatic annotation of such recordings through two different sound scene analysis paradigms: A scene-classification method using feature learning, and an event-detection method using probabilistic latent component analysis. We analyze recordings made with Eurasian jackdaws (Corvus monedula) in both captive and field settings. Results are comparable with the state of the art in sound scene analysis; we find that the current recognition quality level enables scalable automatic annotation of audio logger data, given partial annotation, but also find that individual differences between animals and/or their backpacks limit the generalization from one individual to another. we consider the interrelation of \“scenes\” and \“events\” in this particular task, and issues of temporal resolution.

}, keywords = {acoustics, birds, context, event detection, image analysis, microphones, pattern recognition, speech, zoology}, issn = {2329-9290}, doi = {10.1109/TASLP.2017.2690565}, url = {http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7933044/}, author = {Stowell, Dan and Gill, Lisa F.} }