Acoustic communication is fundamental to the behaviour of many species. If we want to understand animal behaviour we need tools that allow us to objectively examine the details of vocalisations. What information are they sharing, and how is it encoded?
Often, acoustic communication is structured as a temporal sequence of distinct acoustic units (e.g. syllables), where information is encoded in the types of units and sometimes their temporal arrangement (syntax). In such cases, this is the flowchart for acoustic analysis:
Classification is a key step, because once you have a dataset of labelled units, you can analyse repertoire size and sequence structure and compare between individuals, sexes, sites, and seasons.
Manual classification by human eye and ear remains the primary and most reliable method for most species, but is hindered by a lack of tools, especially for large and diverse datasets.
That’s where Koe comes in. By facilitating large-scale, high-resolution classification and analysis of acoustic units, Koe opens up many possibilities for bioacoustics research.