The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA) and JASA Express Letters are calling for papers for a joint Special Issue on "Ecological Perspectives on Hearing."
Ecological approaches to hearing by human and non-human organisms aim to study an organism's ability to use sound to represent, understand, manipulate, and navigate the surrounding environment, emphasizing ecologically relevant sounds and tasks. Until now, very little attention has been paid to (truly) natural environments and natural sounds or soundscapes (i.e., animal vocalizations and geophysical sounds) and the capacity of auditory systems to monitor and infer ecological processes at work in these environments and their changes, ignoring the evolutionary processes that have shaped auditory mechanisms. However, this line of research has the potential to challenge general principles of auditory masking, auditory scene analysis and causal perception mainly derived from artificial sounds or anthropocentric acoustic scenarios (e.g., urban scenes). Over the last decade, soundscape ecology and ecoacoustics have recently developed concepts and theories, standardized methods to record high-quality, massive acoustic databases in natural reserves, and computational methods to assess biodiversity and its alteration in these environments caused, amongst other things, by habitat fragmentation, acoustic pollution, or climate change. The questions currently raised by this field have recently extended to the perception of wilderness in environments and the restorative effects it might produce in human observers.
In this regard, extending research in psychoacoustics, audiology, auditory modeling and bioacoustics to the acoustic scenarios and research questions put forth by soundscape ecologists and ecoacousticians should promote re-evaluation of the actual acoustic information conveyed by natural environments while revisiting current models of low- and high-level auditory mechanisms for human and non-human species. Recognizing the need to connect hearing sciences to acoustic ecology and ecoacoustics, this Special Issue invites papers investigating hearing with a focus on natural sounds and scenes, and ecological processes via sound recordings and computational methods.
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