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Estimating density of calling male Eleutherodactylus coqui in Hawaii from audio recordings of the nighttime frog chorus

Francis L. Benevides Jr., William J. Mautz, Christopher J. Jacobsen & Arnold H. Hara (2019). Estimating density of calling male Eleutherodactylus coqui in Hawaii from audio recordings of the nighttime frog chorus. Bioacoustics, Volume 28 (2): 101 -114

 

Abstract: 

Analysis of sound pressure data obtained from audio recordings of night-time Eleutherodactylus coqui chorusing was used to estimate population density of calling male coqui frogs in the major Hawaiian island populations. Study plots 400 m2 in size (20 by 20 m; n = 32) were established on the islands of Hawaii and Maui to provide venues for field counting calling male frogs to investigate the ground truth relationship with the recorded sound pressure data. Male coqui frogs emit a two-note ‘co-qui’ advertisement call at regular intervals. Exploiting the temperature-related and relatively consistent male coqui call repetition rate and the average emitted ‘co’ call sound pressure level (70.4 dB at 1 m), cue counts obtained from a correlation process available in the program Raven were also used to estimate the density of calling male coqui. The study methodology included comparing linear regression results between the field-counted frogs and the number of frogs obtained from the cue count method. Both methods revealed a linear relationship between calling male population density and associated average sound pressure of the resulting chorus.

Keywords: 

Correlation, cue count, Raven, population density, sound pressure