Invasive alien species (IAS) are a threat to biodiversity and ecosystem function worldwide. Unfortunately, researchers, agencies, and other management groups face the unresolved challenge of effectively detecting and monitoring IAS at large spatial and temporal scales. To improve the detection of soniferous IAS, we introduced a pipeline for large-scale passive acoustic monitoring (PAM). Our main goal was to illustrate how PAM can be used to rapidly provide baseline information on soniferous IAS.

The world faces a major biodiversity crisis. It is estimated that over the last 500 years, hundreds of animal species have gone extinct. Furthermore, many remaining species have experienced dramatic population declines due to the impacts of human activities, such as hunting, vehicle collisions, habitat loss, the introduction of exotic species, and global warming. To prevent this decline from continuing, it is essential to increase our knowledge and understanding of the natural history, ecology, and distribution of species of great conservation need and the habitats in which they occur.

In the Amazon basin, several species are restricted to or occur primarily in habitats along rivers. However, little is known about habitat occupancy over time and how seasonal fluctuations in the level of rivers affect bird species occurrence in floodplains. In this study, we verified if the occupancy and detection probability of 10 floodplain bird specialist species are related to 3 environmental variables considered to be important for floodplain birds: the number of Tessaria shrubs, the number of Cecropia trees, and the number of other tree species. We also tested if occupancy and detection probabilities changed among flood pulse seasons.

Acoustic monitoring can help us understand how the frog community in Puerto Rico responds to different types of disturbances.
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Hydroelectric dams represent an important threat to seasonally flooded environments in the Amazon basin. We aimed to evaluate how a dam in the Madeira River, one of the largest tributaries of the Amazonas River, affected floodplain avifauna. Bird occurrence was recorded through simultaneous passive acoustic monitoring in early successional vegetation and floodplain forest downstream from the dam and upstream in sites impacted by permanent flooding after dam reservoir filling.

The mangroves of Puerto Rico occupy a gradient of urbanization that offers a chance to test hypotheses on urban faunal communities. These hypotheses state that urban avifaunal communities have greater representation by generalists and that certain mangrove specialists can utilize urban landscapes. Much of this is said to be driven by food resources, with frugivores and nectarivores benefiting from abundant residential flowers and fruits, while insectivores are driven away by low food resources.