Soundscape and Landscape Ecology - Soundscape Ecology: Principles, Patterns, Methods and Applications - page 25

efficient proxy to be correlated with the population viability, and such an approach
can find useful application in the fields of ecological and biological conservation. A
large male pool contributes to the diversification of the acoustic repertoire and, vice
versa, reduction of the number of males curtails the potentiality of the song
repertoire. This effect has been observed also in small populations of humans in
reducing the diversification of the language.
A recent investigation carried out by Briefer et al. ( 2010 ) has demonstrated that
fragmentation of habitats of the skylark ( Alauda arvensis ), a species in strong
decline in Europe, causes an increase in sharing syllables in populations living in
more fragmented conditions than in populations living in continuous habitat. On the
other hand, changes in song complexity were not found when a population living in
fragmented habitat was compared with a stable population living in a continuous
habitat. Probably the most cultural component of the acoustic repertoire of skylarks
is affected by spatial repartition of subpopulations across a fragmented landscape.
In conclusion, habitat fragmentation caused by human barriers increases the
amount of song sharing but not the complexity of the song.
As stated by Laiolo and Tella ( 2005 ), “bird vocalizations might become an early
warning system detecting the effects of fragmentation over relatively short times
and before other indicators (such as genetic markers).”
Summary
The sonic environment is important for most organisms that perceive, in a species-
specific way, the acoustic information coming from different components of the
ecosystem.
The soundscape is an important theme that can be approached in several distinct
ways, ranging from a simple physical perspective to the cognitive perspective of the
human mind.
Acoustic phenomena have so different and complex degrees of specifications
and time/space scaling that is not possible to concentrate in a few sentences the
overall conceptualizations that accompany this epistemic domain. In particular,
when we try to connect the soundscape to the landscape, we find the maximum
information possible.
A soundscape may represent a context or a complex message or asset of random
individually based acoustic signs.
The effect of the sonic environment on organisms represents a promising field of
ecological research, and in particular we are concerned with soundscape ecology.
This new ecological discipline was presented to a landscape ecology congress in
2009 with a symposium titled “Soundscape Ecology: Merging Bioacoustics and
Landscapes,” where different components such as acoustic ecology, landscape
ecology, bioacoustics, urban and environmental acoustics, behavioral ecology,
and biosemiotics were recognized as primary roles.
Soundscape ecology finds important applications in assessment of the environ-
mental quality of parks and protected areas, in urban planning and design, in
ethology and anthropology, and finally in long-term monitoring of the effects of
climatic changes.