Computational Bioacoustics

Dear Colleagues,

Animals use acoustic vocalizations for reasons that are vital to their existence, such as mate attraction, territorial defense, and as an early warning to other members of the species regarding the presence of a dangerous predator. Animals produce a variety of sounds to communicate, ranging from short simple calls (also called pulses, syllables, or notes) to versatile long songs, which are composed of a complex hierarchy of syllables (very common in singing birds). The communication strategy and the diversity of the frequency structure of the sound pattern depends heavily on the environmental context and age of the living organism. Thus, solutions considering learning in non-stationary and evolving environments are the only possible option. In addition to vocalizations produced in the wild, understanding the mechanisms that regulate communication between animals and humans is particularly important for companion animals, such as dogs, cats, etc., who live in close contact with their human social partners and depend on them for health, care, and affection.

Despite the differences in sound generating apparatuses, animal sound patterns are usually handled in a common manner by means of signal processing and pattern recognition algorithms. This is because a sound source emits consistent acoustic patterns in a very distinctive and characteristic way to distribute its energy over time on its composing frequencies. The goal of this Special Issue is to thoroughly assess the relevance, usability, and performance of such AI-based solutions when applied to animal vocalizations. We are particularly interested in interpretable machine learning solutions from which the interested parties (e.g., biologists, ornithologists, psychologists, computer scientists, etc.) can gain clear insight regarding the problem at hand by analyzing the operation of the modeling approach.

We invite authors to submit original papers, communications, and review articles that focus on the latest advances covering the entire range of acoustic vocalizations, starting from modeling the animal sound production system to animal behavior understanding and acoustic biodiversity monitoring. Topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• computational auditory habitat analysis;
• animal vocalization detection and recognition;
• vocalizations of endangered species;
• animal vocalization separation and localization;
• sound production system modeling;
• species identification;
• acoustic farm monitoring;
• natural soundscapes;
• human–-animal communication;
• tracking of similar breed animals and parturitions;
• biodiversity and population monitoring;
• identification of specific animal(s) for vaccination, medication, diseases, diet, etc. purposes;
• audio-based animal health assessment;
• interpretable machine- learning- based solutions;
• intruder detection and identification;
• methodologies, algorithms and techniques for learning in evolving auditory environments;
• wireless acoustic sensor networks and related applications;
• distributed audio signal processing and coding for segmentation, event detection and alerting.

Prof. Stavros Ntalampiras
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Animals is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• computational auditory habitat analysis
• animal vocalization detection and recognition
• vocalizations of endangered species
• animal vocalization separation and localization
• sound production system modeling
• species identification
• acoustic farm monitoring
• natural soundscapes
• human–animal communication
• tracking of similar breed animals and parturitions
• biodiversity and population monitoring
• identification of specific animal(s) for vaccination, medication, diseases, diet, etc. purposes
• audio-based animal health assessment
• interpretable machine-learning-based solutions
• intruder detection and identification
• methodologies, algorithms and techniques for learning in evolving auditory environments
• wireless acoustic sensor networks and related applications
• distributed audio signal processing and coding for segmentation, event detection and alerting