MAASTRICHT UNIVERSITY · BIOACOUSTICS RESEARCH

Listen closer.
Understand more.

We use bioacoustics and machine learning to study animal populations in real-world settings, starting with birds in European zoos.

Frontier Labs Bar-LT Recorder
Frontier Labs Bar-LT · Recorder used in our research
13Partner zoos across Europe
2,832Individuals
131Bird species
Monthsof acoustic recordings

01 / OUR WORK

Research at the intersection of
sound, ecology, and AI.

01 / FRAMEWORK

Population size estimation

A statistical framework connecting acoustic activity with population-level inference across different vocalization scenarios.

02 / CHALLENGE

BioDCASE 2026

A 2026 bird-counting challenge using real, multi-species zoo aviary recordings. Dataset, baseline, and results are available.

03 / SPECIES RECOGNITION

ARIA

A hybrid BirdNET and PERCH framework for recognizing zoo species in overlapping aviary recordings.

04 / CALL STRUCTURE

Vocalization modeling

Studying temporal patterns, overlapping calls, and interactions in bird vocal activity.

In progress

RECORDER / AUDIO / DATA

How we listen.

See how aviary recordings become data for species recognition and bird counting.

Explore the recordings and data

02 / COMMUNITY

Research happens together.

03 / OUTPUT

Papers & submissions.

BIOSIGNALS 2026 · PAPER AVAILABLE

Counting without Seeing: Toward Acoustic Population Estimation from Unsupervised Audio Features

Aysenur Arslan-Dogan · Aki Härmä

IEEE WCCI 2026 · PAPER AVAILABLE

ARIA: A Hybrid BirdNET–PERCH Framework for Inventory-Driven Bird Species Recognition in Zoo Aviaries

Emre Argın · Bernardo Amado Costa · Aki Härmä · Aysenur Arslan-Dogan

DCASE WORKSHOP 2026 · ACCEPTED, AWAITING PUBLICATION

BioDCASE 2026 Challenge on Bird Population Counting from Passive Acoustic Recordings

Emre Argın · Aysenur Arslan-Dogan · Aki Härmä

BNAIC 2026 · ACCEPTED

Singing Under Saturation: Density-Dependent Detection Probability in N-Mixture Models for Acoustic Abundance Estimation

Aysenur Arslan-Dogan · Aki Härmä

ICASSP 2027 · UNDER REVIEW

PaCCL: Partition- and Channel-Consistent Call Counting Learning for Passive Acoustic Monitoring of Pied Avocets

Aysenur Arslan-Dogan · Aki Härmä

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