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The limits of acoustic indices

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A cross-validation approach with acoustic and bird datasets from four regions shows that acoustic indices produce inconsistent and non-generalizable estimates of biodiversity.

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Fig. 1: Acoustic indices aim to assess biodiversity from audio recordings, but recent research has shown their substantial limitations in extracting accurate and generalized biodiversity metrics.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Terrestrial Ecology Group, Departamento de Ecología, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM), Ciudad Universitaria de Cantoblanco, Facultad de Ciencias, Edificio de Biología, Madrid, Spain

    Diego Llusia

  2. Centro de Investigación en Biodiversidad y Cambio Global (CIBC), Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM), Madrid, Spain

    Diego Llusia

  3. Laboratório de Herpetologia e Comportamento Animal, Departamento de Ecologia, Instituto de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Federal de Goiás (UFG), Goiânia, Brazil

    Diego Llusia

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  1. Diego Llusia
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Correspondence to Diego Llusia.

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Llusia, D. The limits of acoustic indices. Nat Ecol Evol 8, 606–607 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-024-02348-1

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