RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Multimodal system for recording individual-level behaviors in songbird groups
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2022.09.23.509166
DO 10.1101/2022.09.23.509166
A1 L. Rüttimann
A1 J. Rychen
A1 T. Tomka
A1 H. Hörster
A1 M. D. Rocha
A1 R.H.R. Hahnloser
YR 2022
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/09/23/2022.09.23.509166.abstract
AB In longitudinal observations of animal groups, the goal is to identify individuals and to reliably detect their interactive behaviors including their vocalizations. However, to reliably extract individual vocalizations from their mixtures and other environmental sounds remains a serious challenge. Promising approaches are multi-modal systems that make use of animal-borne wireless sensors and that exploit the inherent signal redundancy. In this vein, we designed a modular recording system (BirdPark) that yields synchronized data streams and contains a custom software-defined radio receiver. We record pairs of songbirds with multiple cameras and microphones and record their body vibrations with custom low-power frequency-modulated (FM) radio transmitters. Our custom multi-antenna radio demodulation technique increases the signal-to-noise ratio of the received radio signals by 6 dB and reduces the signal loss rate by a factor of 87 to only 0.03% of the recording time compared to standard single-antenna demodulation techniques. Nevertheless, neither a single vibration channel nor a single sound channel is sufficient by itself to signal the complete vocal output of an individual, with each sensor modality missing on average about 3.7% of vocalizations. Our work emphasizes the need for high-quality recording systems and for multi-modal analysis of social behavior.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.