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Published February 21, 2023 | Version v1
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Data from: Acoustic indices estimate breeding bird species richness with daily and seasonally variable effectiveness in lowland temperate Białowieża forest

Creators

  • 1. Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań

Description

Biodiversity monitoring is important to follow temporal changes of the environment. We examined whether acoustic indices can be used as a rapid and easy-to-apply tool for bird biodiversity estimation in one of the least changed European lowland forests – the Białowieża Forest.

We collected soundscape recordings in early and late spring at 84 randomly chosen recording points. At each recording point, we analysed 72 1-min sound samples to evaluate how well acoustic indices predict bird species richness from the perspective of a single sound sample, single survey, and recording point, and how they follow the daily pattern of singing activity. For each 1-min sound sample, we prepared a list of vocalizing bird species and calculated three acoustic indices: Bioacoustic Index (BI), Acoustic Complexity Index (ACI), and Acoustic Diversity Index (ADI).

We found that from the perspective of a single 1-min sound sample, BI best predicts the bird species richness, independently of time in the season but variably across the day, while ACI and ADI showed weaker and seasonally and daily variable dependency. The correlation between each index and the number of bird species was stronger in the early survey than in the late survey.  All acoustic indices followed daily bird activity patterns, yet they provided greater values before the peak of the species richness estimated by manual spectrogram scanning and listening to recordings.

We showed that acoustic indices correlate moderately to strongly with the bird species richness obtained by manual spectrogram scanning and listening to recordings by humans. Therefore, acoustic indices can be used as a tool for rapid estimation of bird biodiversity in temperate forests. However, daily and seasonal variation in effectiveness of acoustic indices should be taken into account in the analysis.

Notes

The S1Dataset.xlsx file contains: 

  • Recording points distribution: ID of recording points, coordinates of each recording point, altitude, date of recording (one morning at each point during early and late survey);
  • List of detected bird species: list of bird species detected during the study;
  • 1-min sound sample: recording point ID, 1-min sound sample corresponding to wav file name, survey (early or late), minute in survey (Ordinal variable describing the order of 1-min sound sample at point during a day), number of bird species detected in 1-min sound sample by manual spectrogram scanning and listening to recordings, values of Bioacoustic Index (BI), Acoustic Complexity Index (ACI) and Acoustic Diversity Index (ADI) calculated for each 1-min sound sample;
  • Survey: recording point ID, survey (early or late), total number of bird species detected manually during single survey at recording point, average number of bird species detected manually during survey at recording point (sum of bird species detected in each 1-min sound sample divided by the number of 1-min sound samples analysed during single survey equal 36); mean BI, ACI, ADI for a single survey (average values for 36 1-min sound samples analysed during single survey per recording point);
  • Recording point: recording point ID, total number of bird species detected manually during early and late survey at recording point, average number of bird species detected manually during early and late survey at recording point (sum of bird species detected in each 1-min sound sample divided by the number of 1-min sound samples analysed during early and late survey equal 72); mean BI, ACI, ADI for for recording point (average values for 72 1-min sound samples analysed during early and late survey at recording point).

Funding provided by: Narodowe Centrum Nauki
Crossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100004281
Award Number: 2019/35/D/NZ8/04416

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Additional details

Related works

Is cited by
10.1016/j.ecolind.2023.110027 (DOI)