1,000,000 Observations with Sounds on iNaturalist! (2024)

Last week, iNaturalist hit an exciting milestone—1,000,000 observations with sound!

While this is a small fraction compared to the number of image-based observations, it’s a significant contribution to global biodiversity monitoring. In fact, iNaturalist is now the second-largest provider of sound recordings to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) over the past decade. While initiatives like Macaulay Library at Cornell Lab of Ornithology and FrogID at the Australian Museum also contribute vast sound-generated point records to GBIF, the datasets on the graph below uniquely share with GBIF the sound recordings themselves.

The Growing Role of Sound on iNaturalist

Sound is becoming an increasingly important tool for biodiversity documentation on iNaturalist. Here's how it's being used and our vision for the future.

Using iNaturalist to Record and Annotate Sounds: Case Study from Panama

To explore how iNaturalist is helping record and annotate sounds, we spoke with Brian Gratwicke (@briangratwicke), a long-time iNaturalist user and amphibian conservation lead at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute. In Altos de Campana National Park, Panama, where amphibian populations have been devastated by chytrid fungus, Brian and his colleagues Roberto Ibáñez (@ibanezr) and Jorge Guerrel (@jorge_guerrel) have been using sound recordings to make remarkable discoveries.

Recently, the team rediscovered and recorded calls from the Boquete rocket frog (Silverstoneia nubicola), a species that hadn’t been detected in the park for years. They also recorded the calls of the abundant Rainforest rocket frog (Silverstoneia flotator), which has a very similar call. Roberto Ibáñez, a leading expert on frog calls in Panama who has been studying them since the 1980s, is one of the few who can distinguish these species by sound alone.

So far, around 100 contributors have submitted 261 sound observations of 47 out of 188 frog species from Panama. Our goal is to make iNaturalist an even more valuable tool for collecting sound vouchers and annotations, which we hope will attract more experts like Roberto to share their amphibian call expertise on iNaturalist.

Looking Ahead: Sound and AI on iNaturalist

The future of sound on iNaturalist is bright. Grant Van Horn (@gvanhorn), a longtime collaborator on iNaturalist's computer vision projects and creator of Merlin Sound ID, recently worked with iNaturalist staff member Alex Shepard (@alexshepard) and colleagues from the University of Massachusetts Amherst to publish a paper on the iNaturalist Sounds Dataset. This paper, focused on building sound datasets for advancing AI sound models, was just accepted to NeurIPS 2024, one of the world’s top conferences on machine learning and AI. A preprint on arXiv will be available later this month and we’ll share the link here once it’s live.

Our long-term vision is to elevate sound to the same status as images on iNaturalist. We’re committed to developing tools that will make it easier for the community to record, annotate, and showcase sounds. We aim to leverage these data to power the next generation of AI sound models. These models will not only enhance the iNaturalist platform but also be shared with the broader scientific and conservation community.

By the end of 2024, we project that iNaturalist’s computer vision and geo models will cover 100,000 species. Even building an AI sound model capable of accurately identifying 10% of that—around 10,000 species—could be transformative for bioacoustics research.

Join Us in Shaping the Future of Bioacoustics

Can the iNaturalist community rally to generate the data needed for a 10,000-species sound model? We believe the answer is yes. With the right tools, outreach, and collaboration, we can achieve this ambitious goal together. Let's continue working together to expand the power of sound in conservation and biodiversity research!

Tips for Contributing Sound Observations

Identifying species by sight can be tricky, and sound adds an extra layer of challenge! Follow these simple tips to make identification easier for the iNaturalist community:

1. Recording Techniques: Get as close as possible to your subject without disturbing it. Stand still and keep quiet to minimize background noise like footsteps, clothing rustle, or other sounds that could obscure your subject’s sound. Point your microphone toward the sound source, which may mean pointing the bottom of your phone toward your subject. Aim for recordings of at least 10 seconds—or ideally 30 seconds if the subject stays put—as longer samples can help with identification.
2. Recording Diversity: To help us build a complete picture of each species’ sounds, record different individuals across various locations and times of year. Many shorter recordings from diverse settings are far more useful than a few lengthy ones from the same spot.
3. Background Species: While it’s not required, going above and beyond by adding notes about any background species you hear can be incredibly valuable. Even when these sounds overlap with your target subject, they provide important context about the environment and help future listeners better interpret your recording. This extra detail also contributes to the development of machine learning models that recognize all species vocalizing, not just the target species.
4. File Format: If you’re uploading sounds recorded outside the iNaturalist app, please use WAV files with a minimum sample rate of 44.1kHz.

Posted on October 4, 2024 11:32 PM by loarie

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