The Animal Audiogram Database: A new resource for presenting and evaluating audiogram data on the web

Abstract

Knowledge of hearing abilities, as represented in audiograms, is vital for understanding animal acoustic physiology, behaviour, and ecology. Additionally, such knowledge plays an important role for measuring, predicting, or counteracting effects of anthropogenic noise on the environment. Currently, audiogram data is usually only available embedded in individual scientific publications and in various unstandardized formats, which makes access to and analysis of audiograms across sources cumbersome. We established a newly database that presents audiograms along with data on the audio-physiological experiments and original publications in a structured and easily accessible way. The interface enables combination of audiogram data for comparative analysis of different species, experimental conditions or publications. Focusing currently on marine vertebrates its content is the result of an extensive survey of the scientific literature and manual curation of the contained audio-physiological data. The database is designed to accommodate audiogram data on any biological group and purposed to be extended and serve as a reference source for audiogram data. It is publicly accessible at https://animalaudiograms.museumfuernaturkunde.berlin. [The database was developed as part of the project “Hearing in Penguins” funded by the German Environment Agency (UBA) with means from the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU, FKZ3717182440).]