Why Scientists Are Bugging the Rainforest

There's much, much more to the rainforest than meets the eye. Even a highly trained observer can struggle to pick out individual animals in the tangle of plant life--animals that are often specifically adapted to hide from their enemies. Listen to the music of the forest, though, and you can get a decent idea of the species by their chirps, croaks, and grunts. This is why scientists are increasingly bugging rainforests with microphones--a burgeoning field known as bioacoustics--and using AI to automatically parse sounds to identify species. Writing today in the journal Nature Communications, researchers describe a proof-of-concept project in the lowland Chocó region of Ecuador that shows the potential power of bioacoustics in conserving forests.