Sebastian Hoefer

Sensors versus surveyors: Comparing passive acoustic monitoring, camera trapping and observer‐based monitoring for terrestrial mammals Mammals play vital roles in ecological communities, but many are in rapid decline worldwide. Comprehensive monitoring of mammal populations is crucial for effective conservation, but large-scale m...

Is passive acoustic monitoring worth it for terrestrial mammals? 🎙️🐨

We find it's not the one for all solution, but for vocal species, yes! It's highly effective & saves lots of time and money, especially in the long-term.

Find out more: doi.org/10.1111/2041... 🔈🦊🧪🌎 @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social

YouTube video by Australian Research Data Commons - ARDC BirdNET : Tips, Tricks, and Insights for Ecoacoustic Analysis - Open Ecoacoustics Webinar Series (1)

🦜BirdNET: Tips, Tricks, and Insights for Ecoacoustic Analysis
📺Learn about best practices and common pitfalls in managing data on BirdNET w/ @openecoacoustics.bsky.social @callanalexander.bsky.social, Philip Eichinski & Dr Nina Scarpelli
@cornellbirds.bsky.social
www.youtube.com/watch?v=aml3...

Acoustic recognition of individuals in closed and open bird populations Passive acoustic monitoring is firmly established as an effective non-invasive technique for wildlife monitoring. The analysis of animal vocalizations…

I'm excited to share our new (in press) paper on vocal individuality and acoustic recognition. We looked at Red-tailed Black-Cockatoos, Little Penguins, Little Owls, Tree Pipits and Chiffchaffs, with promising results. #bioacoustics #vocalindividuality www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Who's your indicator species actually indicating for? That's what we set out to answer in our new paper using over 800k hours of #acoustic data! 🧪🦤🔊🌐🌎

Spoiler: Indicator species can be effective #biodiversity surrogates, but spatial scale matters!

Check it out here: doi.org/10.1111/cobi...

Yeah Lyrebirds are amazing! They could definitely cause trouble for AI. But they do throw in lyrebird typical calls every so often and so giving AI longer audio clips and so more context of calls may help. Otherwise we may have to tell the AI that a reversing truck is actually also a lyrebird haha

That’s actually a very interesting question and problem. Out of the box it depends on the training data to detect the slightest nuances. Another way may also be increasing the context length of audio clips as mimics often go through a whole bunch of calls which could be a way to distinguish.

Worm-like creature with ‘dark secret’ wins New Zealand bug of the year award Velvet worms have rows of pudgy legs, skin speckled like a galaxy and dissolve their prey with sticky goo

Very cool velvet worm! And great contest in New Zealand to help people learn more about bugs. 🌎

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/f...

Frontiers | The use of BirdNET embeddings as a fast solution to find novel sound classes in audio recordings

BirdNET embeddings can identify new sound classes beyond its training set, aiding invasive species monitoring, biodiversity surveys, and detecting threatened species across vertebrate groups while requiring minimal call examples and manual validation.

Find out more: doi.org/10.3389/fevo... 🔈🪶🦊🐸🦎🧪🌎

Absolutely agree. Sometimes, it’s challenging to find a good balance between high-quality data and minimising any negative impact on the animals. Important to prioritise the animals as much as possible!

When interacting with wildlife we should ask: “How might the animal be affected by my actions?”


🔎 We explored how juvenile green turtles respond to handling stress by using animal-borne cameras & drones

🌟Turtles swam excessively for 90 min after release

Find out more: doi.org/10.1002/ece3... 🌎🐢🧪

Temperate rain forest image taken from the Wildlife Trusts website. This is one of the most contentious habitat types to define, partly because so little remains in Europe, which makes it a difficult target for restoration. https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/habitats/woodland/temperate-rainforest

A major challenge in restoration ecology is the widespread belief that there is a correct natural community for any given location, and that identifying it is the first step in recreating it. 1/6

ALA Labs frontpage & text logo. ALA LABS text is in white, formatted as off-centre stacked text. Underneath is smaller text, "Experiments in code, data analysis & visualisation from the Atlas of Living Australia." The background is green grass with a Southern Brown Tree Frog in the middle, hanging onto the grass. It has a darker brown top and lighter brown underside. The frog's eye is a rich dark yellow, with a black pupil in the shape of an oval, stretching from the left to right side of the eye

An animated scroll through an ALA Labs post, showing code, text and visuals to make a data visualisation in R. The article is on how to make a hexagon map of Australia, where each hexagon is an area of Australia, and each point in the hexagon is positioned and coloured to represent a species.

Examples of dataviz that ALA Labs posts show how to make in R. They are colourful and fun. One of them is even 3D!

✅ Do you use R or Python?
✅ Are you an ecologist/biologist?

Then you might find our website ALA Labs useful!

ALA Labs is full of how-to articles to visualise or analyse biodiversity data. Some are for beginners, others are advanced/experimental 😀

labs.ala.org.au

🧪🌏 #rstats #python #quartopub

#Bioacoustics researchers: what's your go-to software for viewing/validating/labelling large datasets? Anything that can handle info from multiple audio files (i.e. 100s of files) in one place, display them all nicely for easy viewing?

Media Release: IPBES Transformative Change Assessment Summary for Policymakers, photos, ‘B-roll’ & media resources

That @ipbes.bsky.social report is so relevant and massively important. From policy makers to individuals, pinpointing the underlying causes of the dual climate/biodiversity crisis and their interconnectedness will be key to reach tangible solutions. Solid work from all scientists involved! 🌐🧪

cool. XC will open up for strongly labelled recordings like these somewhere in 2025. #bioacoustics

Sebastian HOEFER | Postdoctoral Researcher | Bachelor of Science (Hons) | James Cook University, Townsville | JCU | Research profile I am a wildlife biologist with a particular interest in the behavioural ecology and conservation of reptiles and amphibians. Currently, I work on ecoacoustics in terrestrial environments.

Hi Eryn!
Could you please add me?
I’m an acoustic ecologist from Australia.

www.researchgate.net/profile/Seba...

Also love to be added, thank you!

Could you add me please? 🙂

Here's a snap (and the recorded song) of a Superb Fairywren from the most recent #fieldwork trip in southern NSW. There were four males and over a dozen females around a pretty small body of water. Was super fun to watch them all and listen to their chatter for a bit 🔈🪶

Sorry I won’t be much help with Armenian birds but I was curious what software you used to visualise the audio here?

Due to the distinctive alarm call of the kookas I am now aware of how many Bobtails cross my road almost every day. Once it was a dugite and once a Varanus tristis but the fury was the same #WildOz and

The value of field research in academia From anthropology to zoology, immersion within communities, cultural settings, and study systems is integral to research and learning (1, 2). Fieldwork, the direct observation and collection of data i...

Strongly agree with this letter in Science arguing that field-based research should be more highly and fairly valued in academia. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Car tyres shed a quarter of all microplastics in the environment – urgent action is needed Tiny flakes of plastic, generated by the wear and tear of normal driving, eventually accumulate in the soil, in rivers and lakes, and even in our food.

#Microplastics: billions of vehicles worldwide shed an estimated 6 million tonnes of tyre fragments every year. These tiny flakes of plastic eventually accumulate in the soil, in rivers and lakes, and even in our food.

Also good to add @sladeaa.bsky.social and @daniteixeira.bsky.social

Hey fellow ecosound nerds! Could I please be added? I work on acoustic ecology in Australia. Trying to effectively apply acoustic monitoring for long-term, large-scale biodiversity assessments.

Hi everyone!
I’m a postdoctoral researcher working on #AcousticEcology at JCU in Australia. In a nutshell, I listen to the sounds of the bush to figure out what animals are around.

Here’s a video of one of the most adorable frogs calling, the Bornean tree hole frog (Metaphrynella sundana).