Supplementary material from "Low-frequency sampling rates are effective to record bottlenose dolphins"

Acoustic monitoring in cetacean studies is an effective but expensive approach. This is partly because of the high sampling rate required by acoustic devices when recording high-frequency echolocation clicks. However, the proportion of echolocation clicks recorded at different frequencies is unknown...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Romeu, Bianca, Machado, Alexandre M. S., Daura-Jorge, Fábio G., Cremer, Marta J., de Moraes Alves, Ana Kássia, Simões-Lopes, Paulo C.
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:unknown
Published: The Royal Society 2021
Subjects:
Online Access:https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.5522917
https://rs.figshare.com/collections/Supplementary_material_from_Low-frequency_sampling_rates_are_effective_to_record_bottlenose_dolphins_/5522917
Description
Summary:Acoustic monitoring in cetacean studies is an effective but expensive approach. This is partly because of the high sampling rate required by acoustic devices when recording high-frequency echolocation clicks. However, the proportion of echolocation clicks recorded at different frequencies is unknown for many species, including bottlenose dolphins. Here, we investigated the echolocation clicks of two subspecies of bottlenose dolphins in the western South Atlantic Ocean. The possibility of recording echolocation clicks at 24 and 48 kHz was assessed by two approaches. First, we considered the clicks in the frequency range up to 96 kHz. We found a loss of 0.95–13.90% of echolocation clicks in the frequency range below 24 kHz, and 0.01–0.42% below 48 kHz, to each subspecies. Then, we evaluated these recordings downsampled at 48 and 96 kHz and confirmed that echolocation clicks are recorded at these lower frequencies, with some loss. Therefore, despite reaching high frequencies, the clicks can also be recorded at lower frequencies because echolocation clicks from bottlenose dolphins are broadband. We concluded that ecological studies based on the presence–absence data are still effective for bottlenose dolphins when acoustic devices with a limited sampling rate are used.