arXiv subjects

Inês Nolasco

Publications and source records attributed to Inês Nolasco.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Embryonic Exposure to VPA Influences Chick Vocalisations: A Computational Study

In young animals like poultry chicks (Gallus gallus), vocalisations convey information about affective and behavioural states. Traditional approaches to vocalisation analysis, relying on manual annotation and predefined categories, introduce biases, limit scalability, and fail to capture the full complexity of vocal repertoires. We introduce a computational framework for the automated detection, acoustic feature extraction, and unsupervised learning of chick vocalisations. Applying this framework to a dataset of newly hatched chicks, we identified two primary vocal clusters. We then tested our computational framework on an independent dataset of chicks exposed during embryonic development to vehicle or Valproic Acid (VPA), a compound that disrupts neural development and is linked to autistic-like symptoms. Clustering analysis on the experimental dataset confirmed two primary vocal clusters and revealed systematic differences between groups. VPA-exposed chicks showed an altered repertoire, with a relative increase in softer calls. VPA differentially affected call clusters, modulating temporal, frequency, and energy domain features. Overall, VPA-exposed chicks produced vocalisations with shorter duration, reduced pitch variability, and modified energy profiles, with the strongest alterations observed in louder calls. This study provides a computational framework for analysing chick vocalisations, advancing knowledge of early-life communication in typical and atypical vocal development.

cs.SD↗

arXiv2023

Learning to detect an animal sound from five examples

Automatic detection and classification of animal sounds has many applications in biodiversity monitoring and animal behaviour. In the past twenty years, the volume of digitised wildlife sound available has massively increased, and automatic classification through deep learning now shows strong results. However, bioacoustics is not a single task but a vast range of small-scale tasks (such as individual ID, call type, emotional indication) with wide variety in data characteristics, and most bioacoustic tasks do not come with strongly-labelled training data. The standard paradigm of supervised learning, focussed on a single large-scale dataset and/or a generic pre-trained algorithm, is insufficient. In this work we recast bioacoustic sound event detection within the AI framework of few-shot learning. We adapt this framework to sound event detection, such that a system can be given the annotated start/end times of as few as 5 events, and can then detect events in long-duration audio -- even when the sound category was not known at the time of algorithm training. We introduce a collection of open datasets designed to strongly test a system's ability to perform few-shot sound event detections, and we present the results of a public contest to address the task. We show that prototypical networks are a strong-performing method, when enhanced with adaptations for general characteristics of animal sounds. We demonstrate that widely-varying sound event durations are an important factor in performance, as well as non-stationarity, i.e. gradual changes in conditions throughout the duration of a recording. For fine-grained bioacoustic recognition tasks without massive annotated training data, our results demonstrate that few-shot sound event detection is a powerful new method, strongly outperforming traditional signal-processing detection methods in the fully automated scenario.

cs.SD↗

arXiv2021

To bee or not to bee: Investigating machine learning approaches for beehive sound recognition

In this work, we aim to explore the potential of machine learning methods to the problem of beehive sound recognition. A major contribution of this work is the creation and release of annotations for a selection of beehive recordings. By experimenting with both support vector machines and convolutional neural networks, we explore important aspects to be considered in the development of beehive sound recognition systems using machine learning approaches.

cs.SD↗

arXiv2019

Audio-based identification of beehive states

The absence of the queen in a beehive is a very strong indicator of the need for beekeeper intervention. Manually searching for the queen is an arduous recurrent task for beekeepers that disrupts the normal life cycle of the beehive and can be a source of stress for bees. Sound is an indicator for signalling different states of the beehive, including the absence of the queen bee. In this work, we apply machine learning methods to automatically recognise different states in a beehive using audio as input. % The system is built on top of a method for beehive sound recognition in order to detect bee sounds from other external sounds. We investigate both support vector machines and convolutional neural networks for beehive state recognition, using audio data of beehives collected from the NU-Hive project. Results indicate the potential of machine learning methods as well as the challenges of generalizing the system to new hives.

cs.SD↗