03544nas a2200121 4500008004100000245017400041210006900215260003800284490005000322520299300372100001603365856004103381 2017 eng d00aDo forests ‘fall silent’ following aerial applications of 1080 poison? Development and application of bird monitoring methods using automated sound recording devices0 aDo forests fall silent following aerial applications of 1080 poi bVictoria University of Wellington0 vMaster of Science in Ecology and Biodiversity3 a

Electronic bioacoustic techniques are providing new and effective ways of monitoring birds and have a number of advantages over other traditional monitoring methods. Given the increasing popularity of bioacoustic methods, and the difficulties associated with automated analyses (e.g. high Type I error rates), it is important that the most effective ways of scoring audio recordings are investigated. In Chapter Two I describe a novel sub-sampling and scoring technique (the ‘10 in 60 sec’ method) which estimates the vocal conspicuousness of bird species through the use of repeated presence-absence counts and compare its performance with a current manual method. The ‘10 in 60 sec’ approach reduced variability in estimates of vocal conspicuousness, significantly increased the number of species detected per count and reduced temporal autocorrelation. I propose that the ‘10 in 60 sec’ method will have greater overall ability to detect changes in underlying birdsong parameters and hence provide more informative data to scientists and conservation managers.
It is often anecdotally suggested that forests ‘fall silent’ and are devoid of birdsong following aerial 1080 operations. However, it is difficult to objectively assess the validity of this claim without quantitative information that addresses the claim specifically. Therefore in Chapter Three I applied the methodological framework outlined in Chapter Two to answer a controversial conservation question: Do New Zealand forests ‘fall silent’ after aerial 1080 operations? At the community level I found no evidence for a reduction in birdsong after the 1080 operation and eight out of the nine bird taxa showed no evidence for a decline in vocal conspicuousness. Only one species, tomtit (Petroica macrocephala), showed evidence for a decline in vocal conspicuousness, though this effect was non-significant after applying a correction for multiple tests.
In Chapter Four I used tomtits as a case study species to compare manual and automated approaches to: (1) estimating vocal conspicuousness and (2) determine the feasibility of using an automated detector on a New Zealand passerine. I found that data from the automated method were significantly positively correlated with the manual method although the relationship was not particularly strong (Pearson’s r = 0.62, P < 0.0001). The automated method suffered from a relatively high false negative rate and the data it produced did not reveal a decline in tomtit call rates following the 1080 drop. Given the relatively poor performance of the automated method, I propose that the automatic detector developed in this thesis requires further refinement before it is suitable for answering management-level questions for tomtit populations. However, as pattern recognition technology continues to improve automated methods are likely to become more viable in the future.

1 aCook, Asher uhttps://bio.acousti.ca/de/node/5259401841nas a2200229 4500008004100000022001300041245007100054210006900125260001600194300001200210490000800222520116700230653002101397653001301418653002501431653001401456653001601470653001601486100002201502700002101524856006601545 2017 eng d a0169204600aAcoustic masking of soniferous species of the St-Lawrence lowlands0 aAcoustic masking of soniferous species of the StLawrence lowland cJan-12-2017 a31 - 370 v1683 a

How much of the acoustic resource shared by vocalizing animal species is masked by human-induced noise has become a central question in the emerging field of soundscape ecology. The goal of our study was to evaluate the joint probability that masking could occur for anuran, bird, or stridulating orthopteran species along the spectral, spatial and temporal dimensions of the acoustic space. We evaluated acoustic overlap in the dominant frequencies, absolute amplitudes (emitter-receiver distances), and time-series (temporal match-mismatch) of human- and animal-induced sounds in three landscape settings: urban, peri-urban and rural. Acoustic overlap was evaluated at the day scale during the active vocalizing period of each taxon. Our results suggest that acoustic masking is unlikely for a vast majority of species in the three taxonomic groups; ranging from 5–7% for anurans to 3–4% for birds and less than 1% for orthopterans. However, in urban contexts, acoustic masking could be a selective force when coupled to other factors that covary with the amount of noise produced by human activities, such as habitat loss and degradation.

10aacoustic masking10abiophony10adistribution overlap10aphenology10asoundscapes10aurban noise1 aDesrochers, Louis1 aProulx, Raphaël uhttp://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S016920461730223201053nas a2200145 4500008004100000245009600041210006900137520054000206653002500746653002100771653002800792653002300820100002500843856003900868 2017 eng d00aThe Clustering of Acoustic Indices derived from Long-duration Recordings of the Environment0 aClustering of Acoustic Indices derived from Longduration Recordi3 a

This paper outlines the recording dataset and methods used to choose a clustering algorithm for a large twenty-six month acoustic dataset. The recordings were of the natural environment and consist of thirteen months of recording from each of two sites in two national parks 160 km north of Brisbane, Queensland. This paper also explains the calculation and use of the intra-three-day-distance (I3DD) error measure used to determine the optimum clustering result. Site maps and photos are provided at the end of this document.

10aacoustic environment10aacoustic indices10ahierarchical clustering10ak-means clustering1 aPhillips, Yvonne, F. uhttps://eprints.qut.edu.au/110659/01121nas a2200145 4500008004100000245010500041210006900146520061600215653002500831653002100856653001800877653002100895653002000916856003900936 2017 eng d00aThe calculation of acoustic indices derived from long-duration recordings of the natural environment0 acalculation of acoustic indices derived from longduration record3 a

The work described in this technical report is part of ongoing research within the QUT Ecoacoustics Research Group to build practical tools for the manipulation, analysis and visualisation of recordings of the natural environment. This report describes methods we use to calculate spectral and summary acoustic indices derived from recordings of the environment. A spectral index is a vector of N values, one for each frequency bin of the spectrogram. A summary index is a scalar value, in some cases derived directly from the waveform envelope and in other cases from the corresponding spectral index.

10aacoustic environment10aacoustic indices10aeco-acoustics10aspectral indices10asummary indices uhttps://eprints.qut.edu.au/110634/