The AudioMoth Online Conference 2023

For the second year in a row, Nils Bouillard has arranged, curated, and orchestrated The AudioMoth Online Conference!

And it was even better than the first one! I'll share the description seen on the welcome screen of the course:

"Welcome to this second edition of the Audiomoth Online Conference. Over the course of four sessions, we will be hearing from 12 researchers using Audiomoth in the field! The topics we will be covering will include coral reefs, soundscapes, birds, bats, rodents as well as perspectives and a bit of an overview of the state of affordable bioacoustic tools. Needless to say, the breadth of knowledge that will be shared during this conference, once more, will be substantial and may give you some ideas for projects of your own!"

If you look closely, you can see what the prices were (€57, and €30 for Students).

This 2023 Conference featured 12 speakers!

A LOT of material was covered! Let's get a couple of things out of the way:

• I learned a lot!
• Each of these talks were simply fascinating!

The kind of stuff that would inspire one to start thinking about collecting wildlife sound recordings! As well as underwater recordings...And hydrophones!

Yes, I still have the cutest little (purple) circuit boards for building pre-amps for (DIY) hydrophones...

No, I haven't built any yet, because I'm a bit of a scatterbrain who gets distracted by shiny, new things! lol

Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating, but - Back to The AudioMoth Conference!

12 speakers - I'll break it down further (a generalization):

Session 1

• AudioMoth + Light Pollution + Effects on the timing of bird songs (Hong Kong). By Ann To.
• AudioMoth + Bat Activity + Street lights (Hong Kong). By John Allcock. 💓
• AudioMoth + Utility of Acoustic Indices to assess diversity of birds. By Gaurav Singh

Very engrossing! Light pollution and Swinhoe's White Eye (bird) - Wow! The effects of light pollution, and street lighting on bats, Along with fascinating findings while assessing the diversity of passerine/non-passerine birds. All excellent and very informative!

Session 2

• AudioMoth + Sampling High Frequency calls of Cave Bats + Southeastern Amazon. By Giulliana Appel.
• AudioMoth + Impact of community-led Conservation Practices on Biodiversity in Floodplain Lakes + Jurua River / Amazon. By Carly Batist.
• Taking The AudioMoth Underwater + Oceanic Soundscapes + HydroMoth. By Lucille Chapuis. 💓

The techniques used to record cave bats in the Amazon was illuminating and enchanting, Learning about the floodplains, weather, and wildlife, as well as cutting edge data manipulation was interesting, The oceanic soundscapes/underwater recording, as well as equipment discussion was captivating. 

Session 3

• AudioMoth + Assessing Avian Diversity in Taita Hills, Kenya. By Vikram Malhi
• AudioMoth + Estimating The Abundance of The Critically Endangered Great Green Macaw. By Tom Lewis. 💓
• AudioMoth + Social Vocalization In Social Networks of Wild, Free-Living House Mice. By Nicholas Jourjine. 💓

Fascinating descriptions of methodologies in (avian) surveys, and data collection, The critically endangered Green Macaw is simply captivating, I thoroughly enjoyed the informative talk on the (wild) House Mice.

Session 4

• HydroMoths + Hurricanes + How Does A Low-Cost Recording Device Perform in Extreme Weather. By Nathan Wolek. 💓
• AudioMoth + Creating Tools To Conserve Our Wildlife. By Andrew Schulz.
• AudioMoth + Open Acoustic Devices. By Andy Hill. 💓

The Hurricanes and Hydromoths presentation was just chock-full of getting kids involved in real science; educative! Creating Tools to conserve our wildlife was incredibly informative, and also demonstrated kids involved in real science, the talk from Andy Hill was extremely instructive and explanatory. He shared several valuable/useful guidelines for getting the most from AudioMoths.

Now: Please keep in mind, that all of these presentations were fascinating and informative! I found all of them captivating, and deeply appreciated each of them. I simply placed a "💓" after the ones which I found to be particularly absorbing to me.

Each of these talks offered those in attendance, a unique glimpse into the current state of bioacoustic study. Each consisted of instructional breakdowns, and informative explanations of the projects discussed. As well as very well explained details of the processes, and a glimpse into the extensive amounts of work involved. 

These educational AudioMoth Online Conferences are a treasure trove of learning; and not to be missed! They are an outstanding way to learn which current, and future methods are being employed in the field of bioacoustics. 

In many cases, a look into what it's like, to utilize state-of-the-art manipulation of collected acoustic data. As well as methods and techniques, employed in challenging environments, to collect important and viable bioacoustic data.

So these online conferences would be ideal for anyone who works with, or plans to work with or deploy, virtually any device created by Open Acoustic Devices.

Attendees who have watched all the courses, whether live or recorded playback, get a certificate of completion emailed to them.

By the way, you can subscribe to the free email updates right from the Barbastella Ecology page. Just scroll down to the bottom of this page. So you won't miss out on future events. 

Until next time,

Happy bat detecting!