Subunit definition and analysis for humpback whale call classification

Pace, Federica, Benard, Frederic, Glotin, Herve, Adam, Olivier and White, Paul (2010) Subunit definition and analysis for humpback whale call classification. Applied Acoustics. (doi:10.1016/j.apacoust.2010.05.016). (In Press)

Abstract

Songs of humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) have been studied for several years to gain a deeper
insight on the intraspecific social interactions. Such a complex acoustic display is indeed thought to play
an important role in both the mating ritual and male to male interaction. Hence, the need to classify the
unit constituents of a song objectively and systematically has become crucial to allow processing large
data sets. We propose a new approach for song segmentation based on the definition of subunits. Songs
of humpback whales collected in Madagascar in August 2008 and 2009 were segmented using an energy
detector with a double threshold and classified automatically with a clustering algorithm using MFCCs:
the results, which were checked against a manual classification, showed that the use of subunit as the
basic constituent of a song rather than the unit produces a more accurate classification of the calls. Such
results were expected given that subunits are generally shorter in duration and less variable in terms of
their frequency content and so their characteristics are more easily captured by an automatic classifier.
Analysis of songs from other years and various areas of the World is necessary to corroborate the repeatability
of the method proposed.

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Contributors

Author: Paul White

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