02435nas a2200205   4500008004100000245009800041210006900139520172500208653002101933653001401954653002601968653003301994653003202027653002202059100002002081700002402101700002502125700001802150856006102168       2019                        eng d00aUsing acoustic metrics to characterize underwater acoustic biodiversity in the Southern Ocean0 aUsing acoustic metrics to characterize underwater acoustic biodi3 a<p>Acoustic metrics (AM) assist our interpretation of acoustic environments by aggregating a complex signal into a unique number. Numerous AM have been developed for terrestrial ecosystems, with applications ranging from rapid bio- diversity assessments to characterizing habitat quality. However, there has been comparatively little research aimed at understanding how these metrics perform to characterize the acoustic features of marine habitats and their relation with ecosystem biodiversity. Our objectives were to 1) assess whether AM are able to capture the spectral and temporal differences between two distinct Antarctic marine acoustic environment types (i.e., pelagic vs. on-shelf), 2) evaluate the performance of a combination of AM compared to the signal full frequency spectrum to characterize marine mammals acoustic assemblages (i.e., species richness&ndash;SR&ndash;and species identity) and 3) estimate the contribution of SR to the local marine acoustic heterogeneity measured by single AM. We used 23 differ- ent AM to develop a supervised machine learning approach to discriminate between acoustic environments. AM performance was similar to the full spec- trum, achieving correct classifications for SR levels of 58% and 92% for pelagic and on-shelf sites respectively and &gt; 88% for species identities. Our analyses show that a combination of AM is a promising approach to characterize marine acoustic communities. It allows an intuitive ecological interpretation of passive acoustic data, which in the light of ongoing environmental changes, supports the holistic approach needed to detect and understand trends in species diver- sity, acoustic communities and underwater habitat quality.</p>
10aAcoustic metrics10aAntarctic10acommunity composition10amarine acoustic environments10apassive acoustic monitoring10aspecies diversity1 aRoca, Irene, T.1 aVan Opzeeland, Ilse1 aPettorelli, Nathalie1 aQuick, Nicola  uhttps://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/rse2.129