Resources for the Animal Bioacoustics Community

Online communities related to TCAB:

The Bioacoustics Software Database is a comprehensive/interactive website and spreadsheet of all current software used in bioacoustics: https://rhine3.github.io/bioacoustics-software/

Some links to some commonly used and free tools:

• Audacity – a free, open source, cross-platform software for recording and editing sounds
• Pamguard – developed by Doug Gillespie
• Raven – developed by the K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservaiton Bioacoustics at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology
• Soundruler – an extensive analysis, graphing, and teaching tool for bioacoustics
• Wavesurfer – an Open Source tool for sound visualization and manipulation

The Fall 2024 Virtual 187th ASA Meeting featured a session of Animal Bioacoustics Virtual Lab Tours

• Curtain University – Center for Marine Science and Technology (CMST) and Center of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (COEST): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dNpmXnIM28

Would you like to share a virtual tour of your lab? Reach out to the TCAB Chair and we can add your lab!

Some of the peer-reviewed journals that publish papers related to animal bioacoustics and bioacoustic technologies and methodologies:

• Animal Behaviour
• Applied Acoustics
• Behaviour
• Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology
• Bioacoustics
• Biological Conservation
• Canadian Journal of Zoology
• Canadian Acoustics
• Ecological Informatics
• Ethology
• Ethology, Ecology, & Evolution
• Frontiers in Marine Science
• Frontiers in Remote Sensing
• IEEE/ACM Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing
• IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing
• Journal of Applied Ecology
• Journal of Cetacean Research and Management
• Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
• Marine Mammal Science
• Nature
• PeerJ Computer Science
• PLOS Computational Biology
• Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation
• Royal Society Open Science
• Science
• Sensors

There are many freely available sound libraries now available (and the list keeps growing!). If you are looking for a particular library you may also find help on the Bioacoustics Stack Exchange. 

• The Macaulay Library – an online animal sound and video catalog
• The Discovery of Sound in the Sea (DOSITS) project of the University of Rhode Island
• FishBase’s collection of example fish sounds; click on the “Fish sounds” button
• Animal Sound Archive of the Humboldt-University, Berlin (Germany)
• National Museum of Natural History of Madrid’s Animal Sound Library, or Fonoteca Zoologica (Spain)
• Ohio State University Borror Laboratory for Bioacoustics collection
• University of Washington’s Pacific Northwest Bat Call Library
• Xeno-Canto, a collection of user-contributed bird songs
• Salish Sea hydrophone network, live audio streams and recordings from killer whale habitats in the USA and Canada
• Beam Reach, Marine Science and Sustainability School
• Voices in the Sea, Scripps Whale Acoustics Lab
• Songs of European Singing Cicadas – an online cicada sound library
• Bug Bytes – USDA website containing links to insect sound files
• Sample Songs of Crickets and Katydids, hosted by the University of Florida Entomology and Nematology Dept
• Dave Gammond’s NatureSounds – audio files for amateur bird enthusiasts and educators
• SeaWorld/Busch Gardens Animal Sounds Library
• Ecosounds – a repository of environmental audio recordings
• Frog voices of Borneo
• Florida Museum’s Bird Sounds Database
• Watkins Marine Mammal Sound Database
• Frog Blog, an online to portal to learn a bit more about some frogs and their calls
• Birdvox, machine listening for Bird Migration Monitoring, a collaboration between the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and NYU’s Music and Audio Research Laboratory
• Bioacoustica, online repository and analysis platform for scientific recordings of wildlife sounds
• Animal sounds of freesound.org
• La sonothèque du Muséum National d’Histoire naturelle
• CIBRA of the University of Pavia
• Marine Mammal Bioacoustics Library, Centre for Marine Science and Technology (CMST), Curtin University
• CEIBA, Colección de sonidos ambientales del Instituto Alexander von Humboldt
• Wildlife Sound Archive of the Australian National Wildlife Collection
• Orcalab, orca sounds recorded in the “Inside Passage” of northern Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada

1. A broad overview of audio gear for wildlife recording from the Macaulay Library at Cornell University, USA.
2. Another broad overview from the Centre for Bioacoustics at the University of Pavia, Italy.

In case of a detailed question please post a message on the Bioacoustics-L email list…

• ASA committee on standards for animal bioacoustics
• The Acoustic Ecology Institute provides access to news, academic research, public policy advocates, and articles and essays about sound and listening
• The Nature Sounds Society for the preservation, appreciation and creative use of natural sounds