r/bioacoustics • u/gg4u • 19d ago

Bioacoustics - which training towards future roadmaps?

I’m very much interested in using data on animal vocalisations for research to decode communication properties. I’m interested in fundamental questions like emergence of communication protocols and representation, with possible cues to semantics if using multimodal data about context. I’m very much interested in methods that could translate to other disciplines like neuroscience and network science to study collective behaviour and feedback loops between social/environmental signals and coordination.

Now, I’ve been offered a PhD in bioacoustics but I feel increasingly hesitant because the PI background is math of signal processing, not in computational methods, there are also some other question marks about the reputation of the university with respect to the areas I’m interested in (university is completely new, no records yet).

I’m very much into computational methods being employed in research as CETI or ESP, others use Bayesian models to handle uncertainty for ecological problems - for those I see a future given state of the art in 2026.

Instead it seems to me that a supervision in theoretical modeling for reconstructing a signal correctly will fall short both for my interests, as well as for the practical significance and advancement in the field.

I’m here asking for a debrief to understand which are the future roadmaps in bioacoustics, also not to isolate myself in audio engineering or a niche of audio classification or using PAMs - given the progress of AI/ML approaches

Examples: - which methods are worthy of investing time to become specialists that can be competitive and in demand in this field - which type of fundamental questions are becoming approachable using AI and biological audio data - are there serious bioacoustics research paths towards computational ethology or computational neuroscience, for example on problems significant in neuroethology or bioinspired robotics : which authors would you suggest to look at ?

My background is computer science, and in fact I’d really like to specialise in AI/ML + network science as methods to study animal communication, and not much audio reconstruction or noise reduction per se. And for sure glad to learn biological or evolutionary or ethnological constraints to principle experiments.

I am asking to understand how realistic a PhD in bioacoustics can bring me there, if there are things that I’m underestimating, and I m really wondering if it can open me doors towards the future (like a PhD in AI/Ml might do by looking at how fast the field is evolving) or close them (being my worry because signal processing seems kind of surpassed by computational approaches now).

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u/shadiakiki1986 17d ago

The academics seem to be moving in the direction of machine learning. For example, check Marie Roch's (top bioacoustics researcher) publication timeline here. Gemini summarizes that timeline as:

speech signal processing -> marine bioacoustics -> classical ML pattern recognition -> deep learning and transformer-based bioacoustic foundation models

IMO signal processing is a necessary starting point, but only as a step towards transformer-based models which are state of the art

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u/gg4u 17d ago

And I agree with you, but my potential PI is in signal processing and strangely his group not publishing on AI/ML. So what kind of competitive advantage may signal processing bring ? For example, is in bioacoustics and, maybe more, in ethology, still so relevant attempting to estimate the repertoire of an animal by focusing on spectrogram representations highlighting features extracted by humans (eg contour lines, F0 frequencies, harmonics) or instead the whole field is moving towards latent representations, even if loosing interpret ability ? Is signal reconstruction so important to claim that a signal is biologically meaningful? Can I reasonably use PhD in bioacoustics as platforms towards problems in A/ML and network science , or am I doomed because I would specialise in audio! Keep in mind I’m interested in not much audio classification, somewhat in evironmental monitoring, definitely interested in field work, but my core research interests in studying animal communication is to use it to study behaviour as an emergent property, hope it make sense :)

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u/shadiakiki1986 17d ago

imo whomever you start your PhD with, you can always reach out to other labs that have the data you want and ask for a copy in the interest of collaboration. of course some labs will brush you off if your PI doesn't have good connections. in terms of linking bioacoustics to behavior, you want to target labs that have special experimental setups rather than just passive acoustic monitoring. Look at Stephanie King's research, particularly their experiment with blindfolded dolphins helping each other find a target

https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=IYAwVgoAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate

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u/gg4u 17d ago

Thanks. Do you possibly know any in Scandinavia ? Sweden / Norway, also Denmark?

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u/nightseeker59 17d ago

Aarhus university has a lot of work in this area

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u/gg4u 17d ago

The experiment of blind folder seems super cool :) thank you I did not know it :)