Bioacoustics Resources

Projects

Bioacoustics

Links The Wildlife Section at the British Library National Sound Archive (NSA) - London, UK ( formerly the British Library of WildlifeSounds) Bioacoustics Research Program - Cornell Lab of Ornithology, USA IBAC - The International Bioacoustics Council Danish Centre for Sound Communication - Odense University, Denmark Animal Bioacoustics - Dave Mellinger for Animal Bioacoustics Technical Committee of the Acoustical Society of America, USA Center for Bioacoustics - University of Pavia, Italy The Humboldt University Animal Sound Archive (mail to) - Berlin, Germany Bioacoustics & Sonar - Loughborough University of Technology, UK Bat Ecology and Bioacoustics Laboratory - Bristol University, UK Borror Laboratory of Bioacoustics - Ohio State, USA The Fitzpatrick Bird Communication Library - Transvaal Museum, South Africa Bioacoustics Links page - University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany CNRS Bioacoustics Team - Universities of Paris-Sud and Jean Monnet, France Dolphin Study Group Online - Tropical Marine Science Institute, National University of Singapore Bird Song Page and Sound Analysis Page - Steve Hopp, University of Arizona Laboratory of Comparative Psychoacoustics - at the University of Maryland Telinga Microphones - Botarbo, S-748 96 Tobo, Sweden. The Krister Mild Bioacoustics Library of Wildlife Sound Recordings - Kopparvagen 23, SE-176 72 Jarfalla, Sweden Verprintsev Phonotheca of Animal Voices - Institute of Theoretical & Experimental Biophysics, Russian Academy of Science The Wildlife Sound Recording Society UK.

Introduction

• A cross-disciplinary science
• Investigates sound production and reception in animals, including man, the biological acoustically-borne information transfer and its propagation in elastic media.
• Refers to the organs of hearing and to the sound production apparatus, as well as to the physiological and neurophysiological processes by which sounds are produced, received and processed.
• Bioacoustics attempts to understand the relationships between the features of the sounds an animal produces and the nature of the environment in which they are used, as well as the functions they are designed to serve.
• It includes the techniques associated with instrumental and biological sonar for its use in population monitoring, identification and communication encoding mechanisms and allows the assessment and control of the effects of human-made noise on animals.

Source: Laboratory of Applied Bioacoustics

• Some animals use sound ranging from infrasounds to ultrasounds to send messages to conspecifics.
• Basic messages are for calling mates (sexual calls), warning about a danger (alarm calls) or to intimidate a competitor (aggressive calls). In birds and mammals more complex messages can be broadcast.
• Some animals can also investigate the surrounding environment by emitting sounds and listening for returning echoes. Bats and dolphins have developed the most advanced echolocation capabilities to avoid obstacles and to find prey. They use short ultrasonic signals, not audible for the human ear, to reveal small objects (shorter the wavelength, smaller the objects that can be detected). This ability is also called "bio-sonar" or biological sonar.
• A special branch of bioacoustics concerns the underwater world and marine mammals in particular.
• The most recent advances in bioacoustics concern the relationships among the animals and their environment and the impact of anthropogenic noise.