Biodiv Sci ›› 2023, Vol. 31 ›› Issue (1): 22359.  DOI: 10.17520/biods.2022359

• Original Papers: Animal Diversity • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Spatiotemporal characteristics and influencing factors of animal soundscape in urban green spaces

Yuhua Cen1, Peng Wang1, Qingchun Chen2, Chengyun Zhang2, Shang Yu3, Ke Hu1, Yang Liu4, Rongbo Xiao1,*()   

  1. 1. School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006
    2. School of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou 510006
    3. Guangzhou Naturesense Ecological Technology Co., Guangzhou 510630
    4. School of Ecology, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510006
  • Received:2022-06-29 Accepted:2022-10-14 Online:2023-01-20 Published:2022-11-10
  • Contact: *Rongbo Xiao, E-mail: ecoxiaorb@163.com

Abstract:

Background & Aims: The animal community is a key element constituting the urban green-space ecosystem. As an important ecological component of wild animal communities, the soundscape is of great significance in guiding urban green-space landscape design and biodiversity conservation measures. This paper examined 67 articles from the core collection of Web of Science published between 2005 and 2022 to comprehensively analyze the spatiotemporal patterns of and influences on animal soundscapes in urban green spaces.

Findings: The animal soundscape of urban green space was influenced by environmental-spatial gradients and vegetation spatial structure. Animal sound diversity was inversely correlated with altitude, latitude, urbanization degree, and was also related to vegetation type and height. Phenology of the urban soundscape also showed diurnal, seasonal, and annual variation, including characteristics such as dawn and dusk avian choruses, insect and amphibians nocturnal choruses, and other aspects of animals’ seasonal and annual vocalization patterns. The factors that affect the urban animal soundscape thus include mainly vegetation, environment, anthropogenic interference, and self-driving of animals.

Prospects: Despite being one of the hotspots of current soundscape ecology research, animal soundscape research faces challenges such as insufficient investigation of large spatiotemporal scales. Promising directions for future research include the quantitative analysis of influential factors and their response mechanisms as well as the establishment of a global animal soundscape database.

Key words: soundscape ecology, urban green space, animal soundscape, spatiotemporal characteristics, influencing factor