The Acoustic Index User's Guide

Summary

The Acoustic Index User’s Guide is an interactive RShiny web app that defines and deconstructs the most commonly used acoustic indices, as described in Bradfer-Lawrence et al (2024) "The Acoustic Index User’s Guide: A practical manual for defining, generating and understanding current and future acoustic indices" Methods in Ecology & Evolution. These files are a standalone copy of Version 1 of the app for those users who wish to run it locally; instructions for use are given below. The most recent version of the app is available at: https://ecohack.shinyapps.io/Acoustic_Index_Users_Guide/

Background

The Acoustic Index User’s Guide is intended to facilitate consistent application of acoustic indices. Improved understanding of acoustic indices will aid effective hypothesis generation, application, and interpretation in ecological research, ecosystem monitoring, and conservation management. We break the indices calculations down into easy-to-follow steps to better enable practical application and critical interpretation. Our interpretation figures signpost specific soundscape patterns likely to be reflected in acoustic indices’ values. We demonstrate typical soundscape patterns using a suite of 91 example audio recordings: 66 real-world soundscapes from terrestrial, aquatic, and subterranean systems around the world, and 25 synthetic files demonstrating archetypal soundscape patterns. For those who wish to run their own analyses, the example recordings are available to download as .wav files from Zenodo https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11004284.

The Acoustic Index User’s Guide serves as a best-practice template for the information required when publishing new acoustic indices, so that authors can facilitate the widest possible understanding and uptake of their indices. We welcome input from other users who would be interested in helping to create additional pages, either for existing indices we have not yet covered or new ones when they are developed. We encourage interested individuals to contact the authors. 

Instructions for running the app locally

1.    Unzip the AcousticIndexUsersGuide file.
2.    Open the folder and run the ‘app.R’ script using RStudio.
3.    Click the ‘Run App’ button at the top of the Source pane, this will open the app in a separate window.

Requirements. To ensure the app runs correctly, please check you are using the following R software and package versions:

• R version 4.3.3
• shiny: Web Application Framework for R. R package version 1.8.1 (Chang et al 2024)
• shinydashboard: Create Dashboards with 'Shiny'. R package version 0.7.2 (Chang & Borges Ribeiro 2021)
• shinyjs: Easily Improve the User Experience of Your Shiny Apps in Seconds. R package version 2.1.0 (Attali 2021)
• shinycssloaders: Add Loading Animations to a 'shiny' Output While It's Recalculating. R package version 1.0.0 (Sali & Attali 2020)

The app should still run with earlier versions of R, but some of the figures may not display correctly. If this is the case, and you cannot update your copy of R, please see the pdf version of the app in the Supplementary Information of Bradfer-Lawrence et al (2024) or the most recent version of the app at the link above.