Biology subjects

Rice, A. N.

Publications and source records attributed to Rice, A. N..

4 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Hawaiian Fish Sounds and their Potential as Acoustic Ecological Indicators on Coral Reefs

Coral reef monitoring needs scalable, non-invasive tools to complement resource-intensive traditional survey methods. Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM) offers a promising supplement, but its effectiveness is limited by the difficulty of attributing recorded sounds to species outside of previously well-characterized taxa. Using Omnidirectional Underwater Passive Acoustic Cameras (UPAC-360), we identified sounds from 31 reef fish species across 14 families on the Kona coast of Hawaii Island, including 13 not previously documented as soniferous. By releasing video and audio specimens, we have created the largest open-access collection of in-situ reef fish sounds to date for the Pacific. A subset of acoustically distinctive taxa--such as Hawaiian Dascyllus (Dascyllus albisella), Lei Triggerfish (Sufflamen bursa), soldierfishes (Myripristis spp.), wrasses, and herbivorous grazers--were identifiable in PAM recordings through manual acoustic and spectrogram review. Through identifying particular sounds linked to species with different ecological roles, these sounds have the potential to serve as indicators of reef function to increase the information and value coming from PAM surveys of Hawaiian and Pacific coral reefs.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2025

Big Data, Sound Science, Lasting Impact: a framework for passive acoustic monitoring

Marine passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) has produced petabytes of data that are used by researchers, resource managers, industry, and regulators to understand how marine animals use sound and the impacts of anthropogenic noise on species and ecosystems throughout the global ocean. These big data provide unprecedented opportunities to study underwater soundscapes and marine ecology but also enormous challenges to efficiently extract information. To address these challenges, a U.S. federally funded and led Sound Cooperative (SoundCoop) project built community-focused cyberinfrastructure to promote improved, scalable and sustainable processing and access of marine PAM data for management, science, industry and military applications. Driven by cross-institutional participation representing a diversity of data collection methods and conditions, the SoundCoop project established guidance for standardized processing of ocean sound level metrics using freeware software toolkits and developed core tools and processes that support open science. Four examples of comparative analyses that connect disparate PAM monitoring efforts, and integrate non-acoustic data illustrate how comparable, interoperable sound level metrics support a more coherent and synoptic perspective on global ocean soundscapes using methods that current and future PAM projects can leverage. Such a framework around PAM big data offers the opportunity to revolutionize large-scale marine ecology and oceanography in similar ways to other transformative approaches for understanding environmental or ecological patterns and processes at global scales.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2024

Deciphering Coral Reef Soundscapes Utilizing 360 Video and Spatial Audio

Coral reef soundscapes hold an untapped wealth of biodiversity information. While they are easy to record, they are nearly impossible to decipher because we know very little about which sound is made by which species. With identified fish sounds, acoustic monitoring can directly measure biodiversity, detect key or invasive species, identify behavioral events and frequencies, and estimate abundance, all at temporal and spatial scales not possible with methods like eDNA or visual surveys. Using a novel approach to visualize underwater sound, we present the most extensive collection of identified natural sounds from reef-associated Atlantic fishes. These sounds were all ascribed to species in situ on a crowded Caribbean coral reef. The soundfield analysis technique combines visualizations of spatial audio with 360{degrees} video recordings, a method not previously accomplished underwater. We used these species identifications to decipher a representative section of a soundscape recording from a separate recording device. We have collected our identified recordings into a growing open-access resource to catalyze passive acoustic monitoring research, enabling a species-specific resolution of coral reef soundscape dynamics and providing critical validated information for developing machine learning models required to analyze an ever-expanding collection of long-term recordings.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2020

Evolution and Ecology in Widespread Acoustic Signaling Behavior Across Fishes

Acoustic signaling by fishes has been recognized for millennia, but is typically regarded as comparatively rare within ray-finned fishes; as such, it has yet to be integrated into broader concepts of vertebrate evolution. We map the most comprehensive data set of volitional sound production of ray-finned fishes (Actinopterygii) yet assembled onto a family level phylogeny of the group, a clade representing more than half of extant vertebrate species. Our choice of family-level rather than species-level analysis allows broad investigation of sonifery within actinopterygians and provides a conservative estimate of the distribution and ancestry of a character that is likely far more widespread than currently known. The results show that families with members exhibiting soniferous behavior contain nearly two-thirds of actinopterygian species, with potentially more than 20,000 species using acoustic communication. Sonic fish families also contain more extant species than those without sounds. Evolutionary analysis shows that sound production is an ancient behavior because it is present in a clade that originating circa 340 Ma, much earlier than any evidence for sound production within tetrapods. Ancestral state reconstruction indicates that sound production is not ancestral for actinopterygians; instead, it independently evolved at least 27 times, compared to six within tetrapods. This likely represents an underestimate for actinopterygians that will change as sonifery is recognized in ever more species of actinopterygians. Several important ecological factors are significantly correlated with sonifery - including physical attributes of the environment, predation by members of other vertebrate clades, and reproductive tactics - further demonstrating the broader importance of sound production in the life history evolution of fishes. These findings offer a new perspective on the role of sound production and acousticcommunication during the evolution of Actinopterygii, a clade containing more than 34,000 species of extant vertebrates.

evolutionary biology↗