Distinguishing Fauna by their Sound Waveform

Back in July, my son and I saw this really great episode of SciGirls called Frog Whisperers (#301) (it's embedded at the bottom) where the girls learned various techniques to recall a frog's song and match it to the species. One technique was to look at a visual representation of the call, or its waveform. I'm a visual learner, so it was cool see that.

Fast forward to September and the Vieques National Wildlife Refuge gave a talk titled Anfibios y Reptiles, where among other species, they talked about the three species of coquis that we have in Vieques (out of a total of 17 found in Puerto Rico). The biologist presenting the charla was able to whistle the sounds of the frogs and toads, but I wanted something more permanent for recall purposes.

Below, you'll find my notes for the segment on the coquies in a garbled mix of Spanish and English, along with audio recordings which I found at CoquiPR.com and the waveform for each, which I produced from screenshots of the imported audio files using the open source audio editor Audacity.

Three Species of Coqui in Vieques

1) Coqui Comun- the largest of the three at approximately 1.4", it's named for its call, co-KI

This is what it's call looks like:

Here's what the coqui comun sounds like:

(audio courtesy LJ Villanueva-Rivera under a Creative Commons Reconocimiento-NoComercial-Compartir Igual License. See his article on the Common Coqui for more information.)

2) Coqui Churri- almost half the size of the coqui comun at .76" and makes a ki-ki-ki sound as well as a chu-RI, the wave forms of which look like:





Here's what the Churri sounds like (a common coqui can be heard in the back ground):

(audio courtesy LJ Villanueva-Rivera under a Creative Commons Reconocimiento-NoComercial-Compartir Igual License. See his article on the Churi Coqui for more information.) 

3) Coqui Pitito- the smallest of the three found in Vieques. It is .6" and is recognized by two curves on its back that look like a pair of parenthesis.

It's call is the least punctuated, but the most constant, kind of a p-riiiiiiiiii. No clue if this waveform represents one coqui, or several overlapping calls made by more than one frog:

And it sounds like:

(audio courtesy LJ Villanueva-Rivera under a Creative Commons Reconocimiento-NoComercial-Compartir Igual License. See his article on the Pitito Coqui for more information.) 

So there you have it, three ways- verbal description, visual waveform and audio file- to learn how to distinguish a few fauna of Vieques. A good information professional can help you to find and create all three information sources!

Enjoy the SciGirls video.




(minute 5:32 if you want to jump straight to the part of the sound waves).