Bacpipe: A Python package to make bioacoustic deep learning models accessible

Methods in Ecology and Evolution

Abstract

Abstract Natural sounds have been recorded for millions of hours over the previous decades using passive acoustic monitoring. Improvements in deep learning models have vastly accelerated the analysis of large portions of this data. While new models advance the state‐of‐the‐art, accessing them using tools to harness their full potential is not always straightforward. Here we present bacpipe , a collection of bioacoustic deep learning models and evaluation pipelines accessible through a graphical and programming interface, designed for both ecologists and computer scientists. Bacpipe streamlines the usage of state‐of‐the‐art models on custom audio datasets, generating acoustic feature vectors (embeddings) and classifier predictions. A modular design allows evaluation and benchmarking of models through interactive visualizations, clustering and probing. We believe that access to new deep learning models is important. By designing bacpipe to target a wide audience, researchers will be enabled to answer new ecological and evolutionary questions in bioacoustics.

Authors 4

1. Vincent S. Kather Aachen Naturalis Biodiversity Center Leiden The Netherlands

   Leiden University · Naturalis Biodiversity Center · Tilburg University

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Intelligent Systems Tilburg University Tilburg The Netherlands

   Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science Leiden University Leiden The Netherlands

   Naturalis Biodiversity Center Leiden The Netherlands

2. Sylvain Haupert

   Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle

   Affiliation as printed

   Muséum Nationale d'Histoire Naturelle Paris France

3. Burooj Ghani Aachen Naturalis Biodiversity Center Leiden The Netherlands

   Naturalis Biodiversity Center

   Affiliation as printed

   Naturalis Biodiversity Center Leiden The Netherlands

4. Dan Stowell Aachen Naturalis Biodiversity Center Leiden The Netherlands

   Leiden University · Naturalis Biodiversity Center · Tilburg University

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Intelligent Systems Tilburg University Tilburg The Netherlands

   Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science Leiden University Leiden The Netherlands

   Naturalis Biodiversity Center Leiden The Netherlands