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posed to military or fisheries sonars that come in multibeam and receiver-array configurations, yet animals can perform the most complex tasks such as recognizing objects buried in the seafloor. Understanding biosonar has great potential for biomimetic sonar technology and biologically inspired signal processing and is a great example of the application of bioacoustic principles to human-made systems.
One of the newer and rapidly growing research topics within animal bioacoustics is soundscapes, terrestrial and aquatic. A soundscape is made up of biotic (animal-made), abiotic (e.g., wind, waves, precipitation, earthquakes, ice breakup), and anthropogenic (human-made) sounds (Farina, 2014; Au and Lammers, 2016). Understanding soundscapes allows us to monitor environmental and ecosystem changes (e.g., due to climate change, urbanization, or industrialization). In particular, underwater acoustic technology was historically restricted to military use, but in recent years, the broader research community gained access. As a consequence, there are now live, real-time, passive acoustic listening stations across the oceans as well as miniature, off-the-shelf autono- mous recorders. It is fair to say that the field of animal bio- acoustics has progressed the development of terrestrial as well as aquatic instrumentation, hardware, and software as well as data management and warehousing techniques and processes.
Because of the interdisciplinary nature of animal bioacous- tics, many of us are part of other Acoustical Society of America (ASA) Technical Committees such as Acoustical Oceanography, Underwater Acoustics, Psychological and Physiological Acoustics, and Signal Processing. In fact, Ani- mal Bioacoustics has not been a Technical Committee for all that long. We started out as a Technical Specialty Group within the Technical Committee on Bioacoustics in 1988 under the leadership of Bill Cummings. We had 11 mem- bers back then. In 1996, Bioacoustics split into Animal Bio- acoustics and Biomedical Acoustics. Animal Bioacoustics at the ASA has grown ever since. Two of our members are past presidents of the ASA (Whitlow W. L. Au, 2009-2010, and Mardi Hastings, 2011-2012), and our members’ research achievements have been awarded ASA Silver (Whitlow W. L. Au, dolphin biosonar, 1998; James A. Simmons, bat bioso- nar, 2005; and Richard R. Fay, fish hearing, 2012) and Gold (Whitlow W. L. Au, 2016) Medals.
Biosketches
Christine Erbe is the director of the Cen- tre for Marine Science and Technology and an associate professor in physics at Curtin University, Perth, WA, Australia. After obtaining her PhD in geophysics from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada, she worked for
Fisheries and Oceans Canada. She then was director of JASCO Applied Sciences Australia for several years before returning to academia. Christine studies underwater noise, its genera- tion, propagation, and effects on marine life. Marine bioacous- tics is clearly more invigorating than terrestrial bioacoustics.
Micheal Dent is an associate profes- sor in the Department of Psychology at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York. After obtain- ing her PhD in integrative neuroscience from the University of Maryland at Col- lege Park, she worked as a postdoctoral
research scientist at the University of Wisconsin Medical School, Madison, before going to Buffalo in 2004. Dr. Dent studies acoustic communication in mice and birds using psychoacoustic methods and recording vocalizations. She has recently assumed the role of associate editor for Acous- tics Today. Terrestrial bioacoustics is clearly more invigorat- ing than marine bioacoustics.
References
Au, W. W. L. (1993). The Sonar of Dolphins. Springer-Verlag, New York. Au, W. W. L., and Hastings, M. (2008). Principles of Marine Bioacoustics.
Springer-Verlag, New York.
Au, W. W. L., and Lammers, M. O. (Eds.). (2016). Listening in the Ocean.
Springer-Verlag, New York.
Bradbury, J. W., and Vehrencamp, S. L. (2011). Principles of Animal Com-
munication, 2nd ed. Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, MA.
Farina, A. (2014). Soundscape Ecology: Principles, Patterns, Methods and Ap-
plications. Springer Nertherlands, Dordrecht, The Netherlands.
Fay, R. R. (1988). Hearing in Vertebrates: A Psychophysics Databook. Hill-Fay
Associates, Winnetka, IL.
Griffin, D. R. (1958). Listening in the Dark: The Acoustic Orientation of Bats
and Men. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.
Marler, P., and Slabbekoorn, H. (2004). Nature’s Music: The Science of Bird-
song. Academic Press, San Diego, CA.
Narins, P. M., Feng, A. S., Fay, R. R., and Popper, A. N. (Eds.). (2006). Hearing
and Sound Communication in Amphibians. Springer-Verlag, New York. Popper, A. N., and Hawkins, A. (Eds.). (2012). The Effects of Noise on Aquat-
ic Life. Springer-Verlag, New York.
Popper, A. N., and Hawkins, A. (Eds.). (2016). The Effects of Noise on Aquat-
ic Life II. Springer-Verlag, New York.
Wiley, R. H. (2015). Noise Matters. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
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