Editorial: Advances in Ecoacoustics - Volume II

Almo Farina^1*Timothy C Mullet²

• ¹University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Urbino, Italy
• ²International Institute of Ecoacoustics, Fivizzano, Italy

The dynamics of acoustic niches remain a central topic of ecoacoustic inquiry. While the acoustic niche hypothesis predicts frequency partitioning to reduce competition (Krause 1993), the study by Hunt et al. in Hawai'i reveals that native and introduced birds often occupy similar frequency ranges. Their comparisons with null models suggest that observed overlap may arise by chance, raising new questions about how introduced species interact with native acoustic communities and how acoustic competition unfolds across ecological gradients. Spatial ecoacoustics is an emerging frontier. By analyzing the spatial resolution of sound in a mountain beech forest, Farina and Mullet reveal distinct sonotopes across temporal scales, shaped primarily by geophonic sources below 2000 Hz. These results suggest that in many forest systems, sonic landscapes are defined as much by physical processes as by biological ones-an insight with implications for conservation planning and habitat restoration.Temporal dynamics also feature prominently. Seasonal shifts in sonophases provide an integrative view of phenology, linking climatic conditions to vocal activity patterns (Buxton et al., 2016). Mullet et al. identify winter, spring, and summer sonophases in a subarctic ecosystem using long-term recordings integrated with meteorological variables and machine learning. Their work demonstrates how temporal acoustic patterns can serve as sensitive indicators of climate variability and ecological resilience.Ecoacoustic research increasingly intersects with the arts, particularly in efforts to visualize and communicate complex soundscape information. The Soundscape Chord Diagram introduced by De Bauduin et al. provides a circular representation based on acoustic β-diversity, enabling intuitive interpretation of structural transitions in both ecological and musical datasets.Together, these studies reveal the breadth of ecoacoustic applications while highlighting the challenges that remain. Extending ecoacoustic approaches across terrestrial, freshwater, and marine systems will require continued methodological innovation. Because sound carries both energy and information, interacting continuously with environmental structure, associating acoustic patterns with specific ecological features remains a conceptual and analytical challenge.The transient nature of sound has often been viewed as a limitation for ecoacoustic monitoring. Yet new technological and conceptual advances are increasingly reframing this characteristic as a source of ecological insight. As climate change and land-use transformations intensify, ecoacoustics offers a uniquely sensitive means of tracking shifting ecological dynamics-at temporal and spatial scales that match the complexities of species interactions and ecosystem processes. These pressures will continue to test the adaptive capacity of species, which remains constrained by the inherently slow pace of evolutionary change. Ecoacoustics is well positioned to illuminate these dynamics and contribute meaningfully to the future of ecological and evolutionary science.