ChiroVox: a public library of bat calls

PeerJ. 2022 Jan 13:10:e12445. doi: 10.7717/peerj.12445. eCollection 2022.

Abstract

Recordings of bat echolocation and social calls are used for many research purposes from ecological studies to taxonomy. Effective use of these relies on identification of species from the recordings, but comparative recordings or detailed call descriptions to support identification are often lacking for areas with high biodiversity. The ChiroVox website (https://www.chirovox.org) was created to facilitate the sharing of bat sound recordings together with their metadata, including biodiversity data and recording circumstances. To date, more than 30 researchers have contributed over 3,900 recordings of nearly 200 species, making ChiroVox the largest open-access bat call library currently available. Each recording has a unique identifier that can be cited in publications; hence the acoustic analyses are repeatable. Most of the recordings available through the website are from bats whose species identities are confirmed, so they can be used to determine species in recordings where the bats were not captured or could not be identified. We hope that with the help of the bat researcher community, the website will grow rapidly and will serve as a solid source for bat acoustic research and monitoring.

Keywords: Acoustics; Bats; Call library; Chiroptera; Database; Echolocation; Monitoring; Survey.

Publication types

  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Acoustics
  • Animals
  • Biodiversity
  • Chiroptera*
  • Echolocation*

Grants and funding

This research was funded by the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund, grant number OTKA K112440 and the National Research, Development and Innovation Fund of Hungary, grant numbers NKFIH KH130360 and NKFIH K139992 which supported Gábor Csorba, Tamás Görföl, and Sándor Zsebők and by the Biodiversity Information Fund for Asia, Data Mobilization Project Grant, number BIFA04-24 awarded to Joe Chun-Chia Huang. Tamás Görföl was supported by the János Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (BO/00825/21) and by the ÚNKP-21-5 New National Excellence Program of the Ministry for Innovation and Technology from source of the National Research, Development and Innovation Fund (ÚNKP-21-5-PTE-1352). Faisal Ali Anwarali Khan and Emy Ritta Jinggong were supported by the funding of Malaysian Ministry of Education, Fundamental Research Grant (FRGS/1/2019/WAB13/UNIMAS/03/2). Vu Dinh Thong was supported by the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology under grant number UQ TCB 01/20-21. Field sampling of Jayaraj Vijaya Kumaran was funded by the Malaysian Ministry of Education Fundamental Research Grant (R/FRGS/A0800/00481A/011/2019/00704). The work of Dorottya Győrössy and Kriszta Lilla Szabadi was supported by the New National Excellence Program of the Ministry for Innovation and Technology from the source of the National Research, Development and Innovation Fund (grant numbers ÚNKP 20-3-I and ÚNKP-19-2-1, respectively). Lee-Sim Lim and Nur-Izzati Abdullah were funded by the Universiti Sains Malaysia short term grant (304/PJJAUH/6313060). The Southeast Asian Bat Conservation Research Unit was supported by the US National Science Foundation Award Number 1051363 to Tigga Kingston. Jian-Nan Liu was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan, under grant number MOST1072311B415003. Mao-Ning Tuanmu was supported by the internal funding of Academia Sinica, Taiwan. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.