Cited by 40Amphibian and Reptile BiologyWildlife Ecology and ConservationAnimal Vocal Communication and Behavior

Active or passive acoustic monitoring? Assessing methods to track anuran communities in tropical savanna wetlands

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Melo, Isabella, Llusia, Diego, Bastos, Rogério Pereira, Signorelli, Luciana·2021·Ecological Indicators

Abstract

The development of new acoustic technologies has promoted remarkable advances in biodiversity monitoring. Passive acoustics is increasingly being used in ecological research to remotely assess animal communities. This recent revolution opens new questions about the precision and efficiency of these emerging methods in tracking biodiversity. However, most of the studies evaluating passive monitoring have been applied on temperate regions and in the short term, limiting the understanding of the potential of these techniques and the development of a general framework for survey design. Based on a year-round monitoring of anuran communities at Brazilian savanna wetlands, we examined efficiency of traditional (active searches, AS) and emerging monitoring methods (passive acoustics, PAM) in detecting species at an increasing scale (hours, days, weeks, and months). We determined species richness on 42 active searches and more than 34,000 audio recordings and defined six comparative scenarios (with unequal and equal sampling efforts) in order to explore the combined effect of sampling effort and sampling duration on the species richness detected by these two methods. Using PAM, we estimated higher regional and local richness (14 species per site on average) than AS (8.3 species per site) and detected all anuran species found by AS. Except when sampling effort was highly biased towards AS (single-hour PAM), passive acoustics was able to find more species than AS in all cases. In scenarios with similar sampling effort, differences in observed species richness depended on the temporal distribution of samples. As PAM covered a wider daily and seasonal period, the number of detected species increased, particularly at the most intensive and prolonged sampling (thirty-full-day PAM). Contrary to expectations, we did not record additional species when using AS. Our results provide evidence that passive acoustics is an efficient monitoring technique, offering a higher capacity to detect vocal species in biodiversity surveys than traditional methods, especially when applied in the long term. Sampling scenarios revealed that species detection on monitoring programs is associated with both sampling effort and sampling duration. Thus, due to the potential of PAM to increase these two parameters, this technique can reach better outcomes and be particularly advised for ecological research. These findings can assist researchers in survey design under tropical environments and in determining suitable sampling efforts when applying acoustic monitoring programs.

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  • The consistent performance of acoustic indices across environments and methods used to extract biological data suggests that indices-based estimates might be generalisable.

    “This consistent performance of acoustic indices across environments and methods used to extract biological data suggests that indices‐based estimates might be generalisable and encourages their use as a complementary approach to traditional survey methods (Greenhalgh et al., 2020; Melo et al., 2021).”

    From Acoustic indices as proxies for biodiversity: a meta‐analysis (2022) · cites this paper as Melo et al., 2021

    The Methods (§2.3) derive species richness by manually inspecting recordings, rather than calculating acoustic indices. The Discussion (§4) mentions indices only in connection with intensive, long-term sampling. Our copy does not assess whether indices perform consistently across environments or ways of extracting biological data, or whether index-based estimates are generalisable. (LLM, conf=0.76)

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  1. Fox, J., Weisberg, S., 2019. An R Companion to Applied Regression, Third Edition. Sage, Thousand Oaks CA.
  2. Narins, P.M., Feng, A.S., Fay, R.R., Popper, A.N. (Eds.), 2007. Springer Handbook of Auditory ResearchHearing and Sound Communication in Amphibians. Springer New York.
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  4. Scott Jr., N.J., Woodward, B.D., 1994. Surveys at breeding sites. In: Heyer, W.R., Donnelly, M.A., Mcdiarmid, R.W., Hayek, L.A.C., Foster, M.S. (Eds.), Measuring and monitoring biological diversity -Standard methods for amphibians. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, pp. 118-125. · DOI

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Authors
Melo, I., Llusia, D., Bastos, R. P., & Signorelli, L.
Affiliations
  • Universidade Federal de Goiás (BR)
  • Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (ES)
Corresponding author
Melo, Isabella
Venue
Ecological Indicators
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2021-12
Volume
132
Pages
108305
ISSN
1470-160X (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W3212568946
Cited by
40
References
72
Citations by year
2026: 7 · 2025: 16 · 2024: 9 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 4
FWCI
1.74
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Ecological Indicators (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
  • Hispana (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • Biblos-e Archivo (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) (submittedVersion, public-domain)
Funders
  • Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (465610/2014-5)
  • Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (441214/2016-9)
  • Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Goiás (201710267000507, 201810267000023)
  • Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação
  • European Regional Development Fund
  • Ministério da Ciência Tecnologia e Inovação
  • Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad
  • Instituto Nacional de Ciência e Tecnologia Midas
  • Agencia Estatal de Investigación
  • Ministerio de Asuntos Económicos y Transformación Digital, Gobierno de España (CGL2017-88764-R)
  • Comunidad de Madrid (2020-T1/AMB-20636)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Amphibian and Reptile Biology
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecology › Wildlife Ecology and Conservation
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Developmental Biology › Animal Vocal Communication and Behavior
Keywords
passive acoustic monitoring, anuran communities, sampling effort, sampling duration, survey design

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