Improving individual identification of wolves (Canis lupus) using the fundamental frequency and amplitude of their howls: a new survey method

Root-Gutteridge, H., 2013. Improving individual identification of wolves (Canis lupus) using the fundamental frequency and amplitude of their howls: a new survey method. PhD, Nottingham Trent University.

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Abstract

Many bioacoustic studies have been able to identify individual mammals from variations in the fundamental frequency (F0) of their vocalizations. Other characteristics of vocalization which encode individuality, such as amplitude, are less frequently used because of problems with background noise and recording fidelity over distance. In this thesis, I investigate whether the inclusion of amplitude variables improves the accuracy of individual howl identification in captive Eastern grey wolves (Canis lupus lycaon). I also explore whether the use of a bespoke code to extract the howl features, combined with histogram-derived principal component analysis (PCA) values, can improve current individual wolf howl identification accuracies. From a total of 89 solo howls from six captive individuals, where distances between wolf and observer were short, I achieved 95.5% (+9.0% improvement) individual identification accuracy of captive wolves using discriminant function analysis (DFA) to classify simple scalar variables of F0 and normalized amplitudes. Moreover, this accuracy was increased to 100% when using histogram-derived PCA values of F0 and amplitudes of the first harmonic.

Item Type: Thesis
Creators: Root-Gutteridge, H.
Date: 2013
Rights: This works is the intellectual property of the author. You may copy up to 5% of this work for private study, or personal, non-commercial research. Any re-use of the information contained within this document should be fully referenced, quoting the author, title, university, degree level and pagination. Queries or requests for any other use, or if a more substantial copy is required, should be directed to the owner of the Intellectual Property Rights.
Divisions: Schools > School of Animal, Rural and Environmental Sciences
Record created by: EPrints Services
Date Added: 09 Oct 2015 09:35
Last Modified: 09 Oct 2015 09:35
URI: https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/278

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