Effects of intense storm events on dolphin occurrence and foraging behavior

Ecomechanics and the Rules of Life: a Critical Conduit Between the Physical and Natural Sciences

Nature provides the parameters, or boundaries, within which organisms must cope in order to survive. Therefore, ecological conditions have an unequivocal influence on the ability of organisms to perform the necessary functions for survival. Biomechanics brings together physics and biology to understand how an organism will function under a suite of conditions. Despite a relatively rich recent history linking physiology and morphology with ecology, less attention has been paid to the linkage between biomechanics and ecology. This linkage, however, could provide key insights into patterns and processes of evolution. Ecomechanics, also known as ecological biomechanics or mechanical ecology, is not necessarily new, but has received far less attention than ecophysiology or ecomorphology. Here, we briefly review the history of ecomechanics, and then identify what we believe are grand challenges for the discipline and how they can inform some of the most pressing questions in science today, such as how organisms will cope with global change.

Sounding the Call for a Global Library of Underwater Biological Sounds

Aquatic environments encompass the world’s most extensive habitats, rich with sounds produced by a diversity of animals. Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) is an increasingly accessible remote sensing technology that uses hydrophones to listen to the underwater world and represents an unprecedented, non-invasive method to monitor underwater environments. This information can assist in the delineation of biologically important areas via detection of sound-producing species or characterization of ecosystem type and condition, inferred from the acoustic properties of the local soundscape. At a time when worldwide biodiversity is in significant decline and underwater soundscapes are being altered as a result of anthropogenic impacts, there is a need to document, quantify, and understand biotic sound sources–potentially before they disappear. A significant step toward these goals is the development of a web-based, open-access platform that provides: (1) a reference library of known and unknown biological sound sources (by integrating and expanding existing libraries around the world); (2) a data repository portal for annotated and unannotated audio recordings of single sources and of soundscapes; (3) a training platform for artificial intelligence algorithms for signal detection and classification; and (4) a citizen science-based application for public users. Although individually, these resources are often met on regional and taxa-specific scales, many are not sustained and, collectively, an enduring global database with an integrated platform has not been realized. We discuss the benefits such a program can provide, previous calls for global data-sharing and reference libraries, and the challenges that need to be overcome to bring together bio- and ecoacousticians, bioinformaticians, propagation experts, web engineers, and signal processing specialists (e.g., artificial intelligence) with the necessary support and funding to build a sustainable and scalable platform that could address the needs of all contributors and stakeholders into the future.