The need for proper archiving and referencing of sound recordings in taxonomic studies of birds

Abstract

A survey of recent taxonomic studies of birds that included acoustic trait analyses reveals that most studies have not archived the sound recordings that support their conclusions, despite the current availability of online, publicly available collections of bird sounds. In addition, bird sound recordings have often been cited without unique accession numbers that permit unambiguous sample identification and in considerably less detail than other types of samples, such as museum specimens or genetic samples. Both this lack of data openness and the way acoustic samples have been cited undermine the methodological rigor that otherwise characterizes many of these studies, and much invaluable biological data are likely to be lost over time if bird sound recordings are not archived in long-term collections. I suggest that these problems can be easily addressed by embracing the open data movement and adopting some best practices that are widely used in other fields. Just as study skins and DNA sequences are required to be deposited in publicly available collections such as natural history museums and the GenBank, respectively, sound recordings used in taxonomic studies with acoustic trait analyses should be archived in publicly available collections as a condition for publication of associated results. Authors of taxonomic studies involving sounds should archive their sound recordings and provide unique accession numbers for sound recordings examined, and journals and reviewers should ensure that authors have done so. By embracing the open data movement, research studying avian acoustic signals is expected to become more transparent, reproducible, and useful.