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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Liangliang Yang, Dr Matthew Sharpe, Dr Andrew Temple, Professor Per Berggren
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) is a powerful method to study the occurrence, movement and behavior of echolocating odontocetes (toothed whales) in the wild. However, in areas occupied by more than one species, echolocation clicks need to be classified into species. The present study investigated whether the echolocation clicks produced by small, at-risk, resident sympatric populations of Indian Ocean humpback dolphin (Sousa plumbea) and Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops aduncus) in Menai Bay, Zanzibar, East Africa, could be classified to allow species specific monitoring. Underwater sounds of S. plumbea and T. aduncus groups were recorded using a SoundTrap 202HF in January and June-August 2015. Eight acoustic parameters, i.e. -10 dB duration, peak, centroid, lower -3 and lower -10 dB frequencies, and -3 dB, -10 dB and root-mean-squared bandwidth, were used to describe and compare the two species’ echolocation clicks. Statistical analyses showed that S. plumbea clicks had significantly higher peak, centroid, lower -3 and lower -10 dB frequencies compared to T. aduncus, whereas duration and bandwidth parameters were similar for the two species. Random Forest (RF) classifiers were applied to determine parameters that could be used to classify the two species from echolocation clicks and achieved 28.6% and 90.2% correct species classification rates for S. plumbea and T. aduncus, respectively. Both species were classified at a higher rate than expected at random, however the identified classifiers would only be useful for T. aduncus monitoring. The frequency and bandwidth parameters provided most power for species classification. Further study is necessary to identify useful classifiers for S. plumbea. This study represents a first step in acoustic description and classification of S. plumbea and T. aduncus in the western Indian Ocean region, with potential application for future acoustic monitoring of species-specific temporal and spatial occurrence in these sympatric species.
Author(s): Yang L, Sharpe M, Temple AJ, Jiddawi N, Xu X, Berggren P
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: PLOS ONE
Year: 2020
Volume: 15
Issue: 3
Online publication date: 13/03/2020
Acceptance date: 26/02/2020
Date deposited: 16/03/2020
ISSN (electronic): 1932-6203
Publisher: Public Library of Science
URL: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0230319
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0230319
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