@article{f8d3aa049f444497a9b0b06955c952b5,
title = "A practical guide for generating unsupervised, spectrogram-based latent space representations of animal vocalizations",
abstract = "Background: The manual detection, analysis and classification of animal vocalizations in acoustic recordings is laborious and requires expert knowledge. Hence, there is a need for objective, generalizable methods that detect underlying patterns in these data, categorize sounds into distinct groups and quantify similarities between them. Among all computational methods that have been proposed to accomplish this, neighbourhood-based dimensionality reduction of spectrograms to produce a latent space representation of calls stands out for its conceptual simplicity and effectiveness. Goal of the study/what was done: Using a dataset of manually annotated meerkat Suricata suricatta vocalizations, we demonstrate how this method can be used to obtain meaningful latent space representations that reflect the established taxonomy of call types. We analyse strengths and weaknesses of the proposed approach, give recommendations for its usage and show application examples, such as the classification of ambiguous calls and the detection of mislabelled calls. What this means: All analyses are accompanied by example code to help researchers realize the potential of this method for the study of animal vocalizations.",
keywords = "UMAP, animal sounds, animal vocalizations, bioacoustics, call classification, dimensionality reduction, spectrogram, unsupervised learning",
author = "Mara Thomas and Jensen, {Frants H.} and Baptiste Averly and Vlad Demartsev and Manser, {Marta B.} and Tim Sainburg and Roch, {Marie A.} and Ariana Strandburg-Peshkin",
note = "Funding Information: We are grateful to the Kalahari Research Trust and Tim Clutton‐Brock for the permission to work at the Kuruman River Reserve research site. We thank the Northern Cape Conservation Authority for research permission (FAUNA 1020/2016) and the managers and volunteers of the Kalahari Meerkat Project (KMP). This work was supported by HFSP Research Grant RGP0051/2019 to ASP, MBM and MAR, and funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) under Germany's Excellence Strategy (EXC‐2117‐422037984). ASP received additional funding from the Gips‐Sch{\"u}le Stiftung, the Zukunftskolleg at the University of Konstanz and the Max‐Planck‐Institute of Animal Behaviour. VD was funded by the Minerva Stiftung and Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. We thank Gabriella Gall and Rebecca Schaefer for assistance with field work, as well as Richard Young, Silvan Spiess and Leonardos Leonardos for assistance with call labelling. Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. Funding Information: We are grateful to the Kalahari Research Trust and Tim Clutton-Brock for the permission to work at the Kuruman River Reserve research site. We thank the Northern Cape Conservation Authority for research permission (FAUNA 1020/2016) and the managers and volunteers of the Kalahari Meerkat Project (KMP). This work was supported by HFSP Research Grant RGP0051/2019 to ASP, MBM and MAR, and funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) under Germany's Excellence Strategy (EXC-2117-422037984). ASP received additional funding from the Gips-Sch{\"u}le Stiftung, the Zukunftskolleg at the University of Konstanz and the Max-Planck-Institute of Animal Behaviour. VD was funded by the Minerva Stiftung and Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. We thank Gabriella Gall and Rebecca Schaefer for assistance with field work, as well as Richard Young, Silvan Spiess and Leonardos Leonardos for assistance with call labelling. Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2022 The Authors. Journal of Animal Ecology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society.",
year = "2022",
month = aug,
doi = "10.1111/1365-2656.13754",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "91",
pages = "1567--1581",
journal = "Journal of Animal Ecology",
issn = "0021-8790",
publisher = "Wiley-Blackwell",
number = "8",
}