Recommendations for using automatic bat identification software

Technological advances are happening very fast in the bat research field in the types of hardware and software available. One area where there have been significant advances is in automatic bat identification software with full spectrum recordings. There is no doubt that these have massive potential in order to analyse large volumes of acoustic data. It's really important that anyone using these new technologies has an understanding of the limitations and likely biases of the software. This information is essential in order to make informed interpretation of the processed acoustic data.

Paola Reason (Arcadis Consulting (UK) Limited), Stuart Newson (British Trust for Ornithology) and Kate Jones (University College London) have prepared an initial guidance note describing how these software packages work, and considerations for their use. It's important to take different factors into account and the limitations of automatic bat identification in order to make the best use of what is undoubtedly very welcome technological advances.

You can download the guidance by clicking HERE

RELATED LINKS

Automatic Species Identification Courses: http://www.bats.org.uk/pages/automatic_species_identification.html