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Medium-term acoustic monitoring of small cetaceans in Patagonia, Chile

Coastal dolphins and porpoises such as the Chilean dolphin (Cephalorhynchus eutropia), the Peale’s dolphin (Lagenorhynchus australis), and the Burmeister’s porpoise (Phocoena spinipinnis) inhabit the remote areas of Chilean Patagonia. Human development is growing fast in these parts and may constitu...

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Autores principales: Patris, Julie, Malige, Franck, Hamame, Madeleine, Glotin, Hervé, Barchasz, Valentin, Gies, Valentin, Marzetti, Sebastian, Buchan, Susannah
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10276556/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37334123
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.15292
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author Patris, Julie
Malige, Franck
Hamame, Madeleine
Glotin, Hervé
Barchasz, Valentin
Gies, Valentin
Marzetti, Sebastian
Buchan, Susannah
author_facet Patris, Julie
Malige, Franck
Hamame, Madeleine
Glotin, Hervé
Barchasz, Valentin
Gies, Valentin
Marzetti, Sebastian
Buchan, Susannah
author_sort Patris, Julie
collection PubMed
description Coastal dolphins and porpoises such as the Chilean dolphin (Cephalorhynchus eutropia), the Peale’s dolphin (Lagenorhynchus australis), and the Burmeister’s porpoise (Phocoena spinipinnis) inhabit the remote areas of Chilean Patagonia. Human development is growing fast in these parts and may constitute a serious threat to such poorly known species. It is thus urgent to develop new tools to try and study these cryptic species and find out more about their behavior, population levels, and habits. These odontocetes emit narrow-band high-frequency (NBHF) clicks and efforts have been made to characterize precisely their acoustic production. Passive acoustic monitoring is a common way to study these animals. Nevertheless, as the signal frequency is usually higher than 100 kHz, storage problems are acute and do not allow for long-term monitoring. The solutions for recording NBHF clicks are usually twofold: either short duration, opportunistic recording from a small boat in presence of the animals (short-term monitoring) or long-term monitoring using devices including a click detector and registering events rather than sound. We suggest, as another possibility, medium-term monitoring, arguing that today’s devices have reached a level of performance allowing for a few days of continual recording even at these extremely high frequencies and in difficult conditions, combined with a long-term click detector. As an example, during 2021, we performed a quasi-continuous recording for one week with the Qualilife High-Blue recorder anchored in a fjord near Puerto Cisnes, Region de Aysen, Chile. We detected more than 13,000 clicks, grouped in 22 periods of passing animals. Our detected clicks are quite similar to precedent results but, due to the large number of clicks recorded, we find a larger variability of parameters. Several rapid sequences of clicks (buzz) were found in the recordings and their features are consistent with previous studies: on average they have a larger bandwidth and a lower peak frequency than the usual clicks. We also installed in the same place a click detector (C-POD) and the two devices compare well and show the same number and duration of periods of animals presence. Passages of odontocetes were happening on average each three hours. We thus confirm the high site fidelity for the species of dolphins emitting NBHF clicks present in this zone. Finally, we confirm that the combined use of recording and detection devices is probably a good alternative to study these poorly known species in remote areas.
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spelling pubmed-102765562023-06-18 Medium-term acoustic monitoring of small cetaceans in Patagonia, Chile Patris, Julie Malige, Franck Hamame, Madeleine Glotin, Hervé Barchasz, Valentin Gies, Valentin Marzetti, Sebastian Buchan, Susannah PeerJ Animal Behavior Coastal dolphins and porpoises such as the Chilean dolphin (Cephalorhynchus eutropia), the Peale’s dolphin (Lagenorhynchus australis), and the Burmeister’s porpoise (Phocoena spinipinnis) inhabit the remote areas of Chilean Patagonia. Human development is growing fast in these parts and may constitute a serious threat to such poorly known species. It is thus urgent to develop new tools to try and study these cryptic species and find out more about their behavior, population levels, and habits. These odontocetes emit narrow-band high-frequency (NBHF) clicks and efforts have been made to characterize precisely their acoustic production. Passive acoustic monitoring is a common way to study these animals. Nevertheless, as the signal frequency is usually higher than 100 kHz, storage problems are acute and do not allow for long-term monitoring. The solutions for recording NBHF clicks are usually twofold: either short duration, opportunistic recording from a small boat in presence of the animals (short-term monitoring) or long-term monitoring using devices including a click detector and registering events rather than sound. We suggest, as another possibility, medium-term monitoring, arguing that today’s devices have reached a level of performance allowing for a few days of continual recording even at these extremely high frequencies and in difficult conditions, combined with a long-term click detector. As an example, during 2021, we performed a quasi-continuous recording for one week with the Qualilife High-Blue recorder anchored in a fjord near Puerto Cisnes, Region de Aysen, Chile. We detected more than 13,000 clicks, grouped in 22 periods of passing animals. Our detected clicks are quite similar to precedent results but, due to the large number of clicks recorded, we find a larger variability of parameters. Several rapid sequences of clicks (buzz) were found in the recordings and their features are consistent with previous studies: on average they have a larger bandwidth and a lower peak frequency than the usual clicks. We also installed in the same place a click detector (C-POD) and the two devices compare well and show the same number and duration of periods of animals presence. Passages of odontocetes were happening on average each three hours. We thus confirm the high site fidelity for the species of dolphins emitting NBHF clicks present in this zone. Finally, we confirm that the combined use of recording and detection devices is probably a good alternative to study these poorly known species in remote areas. PeerJ Inc. 2023-06-14 /pmc/articles/PMC10276556/ /pubmed/37334123 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.15292 Text en ©2023 Patris et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Animal Behavior
Patris, Julie
Malige, Franck
Hamame, Madeleine
Glotin, Hervé
Barchasz, Valentin
Gies, Valentin
Marzetti, Sebastian
Buchan, Susannah
Medium-term acoustic monitoring of small cetaceans in Patagonia, Chile
title Medium-term acoustic monitoring of small cetaceans in Patagonia, Chile
title_full Medium-term acoustic monitoring of small cetaceans in Patagonia, Chile
title_fullStr Medium-term acoustic monitoring of small cetaceans in Patagonia, Chile
title_full_unstemmed Medium-term acoustic monitoring of small cetaceans in Patagonia, Chile
title_short Medium-term acoustic monitoring of small cetaceans in Patagonia, Chile
title_sort medium-term acoustic monitoring of small cetaceans in patagonia, chile
topic Animal Behavior
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10276556/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37334123
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.15292
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