DOI: 10.5061/dryad.jsxksn085
title: A practical approach to measuring the acoustic diversity by community ecology methods

description: The study of the diversity of animal signals on within- and among-species
 levels is the key to uncover mechanisms that shape the evolution of
 communication systems. However, the methods used to quantify acoustic
 diversity (like repertoire size) lack to grasp several aspects of acoustic
 diversity. Here, we propose a new framework for the study of animal
 communication, in which we decompose the acoustic diversity with the
 methodological toolbox from community ecology. We explore how different
 diversity estimates reflecting different aspects of acoustic diversity can
 be applied to characterise the complexity of acoustic signals. We propose
 that this approach can be used in a wide range of animal taxa to derive
 further insights about the function and evolution of communication systems
 besides the traditional methods. To illustrate the use of our approach in
 a case study, we used the song of collared flycatcher (Ficedula
 albicollis) as a model system. Based on three frequency and time
 variables, we calculated three diversity indies (FRic, FEve, and FDiv) to
 characterise the distribution of song elements (syllables) in the acoustic
 parameter space. We aimed to uncover the interrelations of diversity
 indices, reveal the degree of among-individual consistency, and
 investigate their relationships with certain aspects of individual
 quality. We found that the chosen diversity indices were largely
 independent from each other and showed different consistency patterns that
 were timescale dependent indicating different signalling potential of
 individual-specific attributes. We also found that FEve strongly related
 to the age of males. Our case study showed that decomposing the diversity
 into different components can reveal additional biologically meaningful
 aspects of birdsong.
description: The dataset contains the acoustic measurements of syllables
 from 20 collared flycatchers (<em>Ficedula albicollis)</em>
 and the diversity indices for all individuals calculated on the min-max
 standardized values of the duration, mean frequency, and frequency band of
 the syllables. Syllables from 20 songs were included from each individual.
 For detailed data handling, see the methods in the related
 paper. db_syllable_measurements.csv file contains the
 measurements of the syllables from 20 individual, where the columns
 are: -recID -&gt; individual ID<br> -dur
 -&gt; duration of the syllable<br> -fmean -&gt; mean
 frequency of the syllable<br> -fmin -&gt; minimum frequency of
 the syllable<br> -fmax -&gt; maximum frequency of the
 syllable<br> -fband -&gt; frequency band of the syllable
 (fmax-fmin) db_diversity_indices.csv file contains the
 diversity indices for the 20 individual for which we provided the acoustic
 measurement, where the columns are: -recID -&gt;
 individual ID<br> -FRic -&gt; Functional Richness<br>
 -FEve -&gt; Functional Evenness<br> -FDiv -&gt; Functional
 Divergence We used the modified R script of
 multidimFD.R by Sebastien Villeger to calculate these diversity
 indices.<br> The original script is available at
 http://villeger.sebastien.free.fr/Rscripts.html.<br> The modified
 script included in this data package doesn't standardize the FRic
 between individuals with the highest value.