South African Bat Echolocation Calls with Embedded Metadata

A collection of bat echolocation calls recorded in South Africa, available in .zc and .wav formats. The Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network's Data Discovery platform hosts these files, which contain embedded metadata such as collection date, GPS location, and species identification where available. This metadata is extracted to create searchable filters in the TERN Ecoacoustic Recordings dashboard, facilitating targeted exploration and download.

Use Cases

• Train species classification models based on recorded echolocation calls.
• Analyze spatial distribution patterns of bat species based on embedded GPS coordinates.
• Study temporal activity patterns based on the collection dates embedded in the audio files.
• Filter and download specific call files for analysis using the dashboard's searchable metadata criteria.

Strengths

• Audio files contain embedded metadata, including GPS location and collection date.
• The dataset includes both identified and unidentified calls, providing a realistic field recording scenario.
• Searchable filters in the TERN dashboard are built from extracted metadata, enabling efficient data discovery.

Limitations

• Some audio files contain calls from multiple species, but only one species may be identified, complicating analysis.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The dataset's total size and row count are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network's Data Discovery

Collection Method

Collection of recorded echolocation calls from South Africa.

Time Range

null

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-01 06:38:21.936876; freshness should be verified.

Geography

South Africa