BAT IDENTIFICATION WITH GAUSSIAN PROCESS LEARNING TIM LUCAS sing a machine learning framework to construct an automatic, acoustic classifier for bats is a research and conservation priority for this large and often vulnerable group of animals. Here I use a large dataset of 1,340 calls from 34 of the 40 European species to construct a Gaussian process classifier. I obtain accuracies of 54.6% at the species level and 83.6% at the genus level for the two best Gaussian process classifiers. These classifiers are less accurate than nearest neighbour or neural network classifiers. A hierarchical Gaussian process classifier is suspected to have accuracies comparable to neural networks — this would be a profitable avenue for future research. U Introduction he ability to acoustically detect and identify bats (Order: Chiroptera) is a major goal in bat conservation. Such a system would allow the detection of bats automatically without physical handling or roost disturbance. The large amounts of data this would make available is vital for our understanding, and therefore protection, of these highly vulnerable animals. Bats are the second largest order of mammals 1 with 40 species native to Europe, five species of which are vulnerable or endangered. 2 All species are extremely sensitive to handling and roost disturbance — this is exacerbated by the fact that they often use human buildings as roosts. Also, as they are migratory, an effective protection strategy must be continental in scale. Furthermore, they may be useful as an indicator group, so knowing the health of bat populations will also give proxy information on the health of other taxa. 3 They are, therefore, a conservation priority. This is reflected in the eminence of the Bat Conservation Trust and the fact that the EuroBats agreement is one of only 11 pan-European, taxon-specific conservation agreements. 4 Bats pose particular problems to the field biologist. They are small, fast flying and nocturnal. There are a large number of species, many of which are similar in appearance; in flight only one European species can be positively identified. To be identified reliably they must therefore be handled but contact and roost disturbance is a major contributer to their population declines 1 and is now strictly regulated by the EuroBats agreement. 5 All European bats are in the suborder microchiroptera (as apposed to megachiropteran fruitbats) and therefore all navigate by echolocation. This provides a potential signature that may allow identification of bats to species level wthout harmful and time-consuming trapping and handling. However, there are two difficulties inherent in this approach. Firstly, the echolocation of most bat species is adapted to similar needs and environments and so the calls can be quite similar. This is in contrast to many bird groups whose calls are under disruptive selection due to their function in identification for mating. 6 The second issue is that there is a large amount of call variation within a species; between individuals and within a single individual. 7–9 It is possible that there is simply not enough information in the calls to fully distinguish between species and it is likely that classification accuracy will never be perfect. The use of machine learning to acoustically identify species is an inherently inter-disciplinary research area drawing on expertise from statistics and computer science to solve important problems in ecology, conservation, evolution and other areas of biology. 10 This is the first time Gaussian process learning has been used for a species classification task. However, many authors have developed other machine learning models to identify bats. Discriminant function analysis 11–17 and artificial neural networks (aNNs) 12,14,16–20 are the two most commonly used methods although other methods have been used. 14,16,17,21 With only a few exceptions, 14 aNNs are found to be the most effective method. Machine learning has also been used to classify a wide variety of other taxa such as frogs 22,23 , birds 22 , trees 24–26 , fish 27 and pinnipeds 20 to species or individual level. Methods are relatively applicable between taxa and so this work gives insight into the utility of Gaussian process learning in species classification in other taxa as well as bats. Gaussian process learning specifically has found applications in biology including T BAT IDENTIFICATION WITH GAUSSIAN PROCESS LEARNING 2 classification of canopy types 28 , molecular regions and characteristics 29,30 , assignment of post-operation treatment regimes 31 and bird flight patterns. 32 Walters et al. 33 created ensembles of neural networks (eANNs) using the same dataset as used in this paper and achieved high accuracies (85.5% for genus and 98.1% for species level) with classification within the genus Myotis being difficult. This classifier was hierarchical with the data being classified into one of five broad call types with one neural network and then classified to species or genus level with seperate ensembles. The call types relate to the broad shapes of the calls. Within each genera, all the species are of the same call type. Therefore this classification reflects bat phylogeny and evolutionary history. The classifiers in this report and in Walters et al. 33 attempt to classify 34 species of bat. The next largest ensemble of bat species a classifier has attempted to identify between is 22 species. 13 This work achieved accuracies of 81.8% and 94% for species and genera respectively. Even a classifier of this size is of little use as it does not include all the species found in the region of Southern Italy where the study was performed. It is a difficult task to collect enough data to train a classifier on more than 20 classes and even within data-rich species, classification is not easy. The dataset used in this paper includes all relevant species of European bat (but see the Methods section) and so any classifier built can be used in the field anywhere in Europe. Bayesian Gaussian process machine learning is a relatively new machine learning technique. It has been shown to be as effective as aNNs, which have emerged as a favourite machine learning classification method. 34 Indeed, aNNs have been shown to become equivalent to Gaussian process models as the number of hidden units tends to infinity. It is an explicitly statistical method, in contrast to the more computer science based methods such as neural networks. The method uses Gaussian processes as a function that maps the trait values to a probability for each class. If Gaussian distributions are considered as the noise around a point, Gaussian processes can be seen as the noise around a function. When formulated correctly they can be amenable to Bayesian analysis so that the data is used to inform the distribution over the function. Gaussian process learning has a number of advantages over aNNs. Firstly, it can be computationally faster than aNNs, taking hours instead of days — for a dataset as large as the one used here — to train a model on a desktop computer. However, computation time and memory requirements are still a limiting factor (due to it’s cubic scaling with both number of classes and number of datapoints) which has led to much work in finding approximations and computational optimizations. Secondly, the flexibility in choice of covariance function allows control over a number of factors such as a) the smoothness of the probability distributions can be a safegaurd against overfitting or b) a covariance function with different length scales for each input dimension can enable automatic relevance determination (ARD). Finally, the output from a Gaussian process model is the probability of an unknown record belonging to each class. This has a number of advantages to the single class given as output from an aNN. One knows the confidence of a prediction which allows the user to set a threshold confidence below which a ‘null’ result is given. The output also includes a ‘second best guess.’ sANNs and k nearest neighbour methods can have similar properties by having multiple outputs and voting for the final output. However, any measure of confidence calculated is only relevant within the context of the model it is from and cannot be easily compared to other models; in the simplest instance a model which takes a vote from only three outputs will always appear more confident than one that considers many outputs. This is in contrast with Gaussian process learning where class probabilities have a rigorous, statistical underpinning. Methods Data The data 33 was collected from EchoBank 35 and contains 1,340 calls from 34 of the 40 European species of bats. This includes all mainland species except two (Plecotus kolmbatovici and Plecotus alpinus) which have very low intensity calls and so are not usually picked up by acoustic recording equipment. Four island endemic species (Plecotus sardus, Plecotus teneriffae, Nyctalus azoreum and Pipistrellus maderensis) are also not included. In practice as long as the classifier is not used in the Canaries, Azores or Sardinia these species will not affect the reliability of the classifiers. The dataset has 100% coverage in 93.9% of Europe. 33 SonoBat 36 was used to isolate calls from each recording. A minimum of 26 calls from each species was collected. When possible, only one call was taken from each recording to prevent pseudoreplication of individuals but this was not always possible. Overall, between 26 and 104 calls were taken from each species (see Table 1) with half the data used for training and half for testing in all cases. Due to the BAT IDENTIFICATION WITH GAUSSIAN PROCESS LEARNING Genus Species Barbastella Eptesicus barbastellus bottae nilssonii serotinus savii schreibersii alcathoe bechsteinii blythii brandtii capaccinii dasycneme daubentonii emarginatus myotis mystacinus nattereri punicus lasiopterus leisleri noctula kuhlii nathusii pipistrellus pygmaeus auritus austriacus blasii euryale ferrumequinum hipposideros teniotis murinus mehelyi Hypsugo Miniopterus Myotis Nyctalus Pipistrellus Plecotus Rhinolophus Tadarida Number of occurances in Output 153 11 15 53 9 5 11 8 2 10 7 12 6 8 4 15 8 14 11 27 23 30 4 27 50 16 14 11 9 17 21 18 12 25 Sample Size in Training Data 14 13 14 40 16 15 13 22 13 23 15 13 25 13 13 27 33 13 13 38 23 23 13 23 52 20 13 13 13 15 26 17 13 20 3 Accuracy (%) 85.7 61.5 78.6 80 43.8 33.3 38.5 9.1 15.4 21.7 20 69.2 12 7.7 30.8 11.1 18.2 46.2 84.6 50 73.9 82.6 23.1 87 86.5 50 46.2 84.6 69.2 93.3 69.2 100 46.2 85 Table 1. Species specific statistics for the Gaussian process classifier with squared exponential covariance function. Data columns show the number of records predicted as each class, class specific sample size and accuracy. different number of species in each genus there is large variation in the number of records per genus (Table 3). Myotis has 224 records while five genera have less than 20. SonoBat was used to extract 24 frequency parameters from each call. F-ratios were used to select 12 parameters that were most likely to be useful in discriminating between species. Classifiers are created using the training data D = {xi , yi } containing i input vectors, x — each of length N where N is the number of parameters used — and i outputs y ∈ c where c = {c1 · · · cK=12 } is the set of possible classes. Models and Validation In this project I used the dataset to construct nearest neighbour classifiers and Gaussian process classifiers. Neither method used a hierarchical framework for classification. Both the nearest neighbour classifiers and previously constructed hierarchical eANN 33 were used as benchmarks for the Gaussian process classifiers. I created classifiers to identify individuals to species and genus level. In the eANN 33 and all models below, half of the data — half of each class selected randomly — was used as training data while half was used as test data. BAT IDENTIFICATION WITH GAUSSIAN PROCESS LEARNING Classifier Species Accuracy (%) Nearest neighbour 63.5 Gaussian Process: ARD exponential 49.4 Gaussian Process: Neural network 36.3 Gaussian Process: SE 54.6 4 Genus Accuracy (%) 85.7 83.6 81.4 79.2 Table 2. Accuracies for nearest neighbour and Gaussian process classifiers. In all cases accuracy is measured as the proportion of correct classifications or ‘hits’. Thus for a whole classifier Accuracy = # Correctly Classified # of Test Datapoints (1) while specific accuracy for class cK within a classifier is calculated as AccuracyK = True Positives # Correctly Classified as cK = # of Test Datapoints in cK True Positives + False Negatives (2) While this does not consider the differing importance of false positives and false negatives it is a reasonable metric, especially for multi-class problems where metrics such as sensitivity and specificity are difficult to interpret. Random classification would yield an expected accuracy of 2.9% and 9.1% for the species and genus task respectively. Nearest Neighbour Nearest neighbour classifiers were made using R 37 and the kknn 38 and class 39 packages. Three groups of classifiers were built: unweighted k nearest neighbour, weighted k nearest neighbour with a linear kernel and weighted k nearest neighbour with a Gaussian kernel. For each test data point xj∗ we calculate the euclidean distance dij , in 12 dimensional trait space, between xj∗ and all xi . We examine the datapoints for the smallest k euclidean distances, dmin 1···k . In ∗ min unweighted nearest neighbour, yj is predicted to be the modal value of y1···k , the output classes for these min is weighted by w1···k which is a nearest datapoints. In weighted nearest neighbour algorithms, y1···k min function of d1···k . I used a linear kernel and a Gaussian kernel for this function. yj∗ is predicted to be the min modal value of the weighted y1···k . I applied these three nearest neighbour algorithms with k as odd values up to 19. I split the data in half and used each half in turn as the training and test data. Gaussian Process Classification To build the guassian process classifiers I used pre-written scripts which implement a multinomial probit regression classifier. 40 I used half the data as the training data and half as the test data to enable comparisons with the eANN. 33 The classifier is not hierarchical — only two models are built; one each for classification to genus and species level. One of the benefits of Gaussian process learning is the flexibility afforded by the different covariance functions available. I used three different covariance functions: Automatic Relevance Determination squared exponential, neural network and squared exponential. 41 Equation 3 shows the form of the simplest covariance function used — the squared exponential function. 0 kSE (x, x ) = σf2 exp −(x − x0 )2 2`2 (3) It is controlled by two hyper parameters: the process standard deviation σf (which controls the spread of output probabilities) and the length scale ` which controls the length scale of the inputs x and so has an important role in preventing overfitting. ‘Learning’ is the process of selecting values for these hyperparameters. The ARD covariance function is of a similar form except that it contains a matrix M of the form diag(e` ) with `1 · · · `K=12 controlling the length-scale of each of the 12 call parameters seperately. 41 As these are individually updated while the classifier is optimised they control the influence each parameter has on the final output; they are the automatic relevance determination. The neural network covariance BAT IDENTIFICATION WITH GAUSSIAN PROCESS LEARNING Genus Barbastella Eptesicus Hypsugo Miniopterus Myotis Nyctalus Pipistrellus Plecotus Rhinolophus Tadarida Vespertilio Sample Size in Training Data 14 68 16 16 224 75 112 34 83 18 13 Number in Output 0 87 0 0 239 86 130 30 87 13 0 5 Accuracy (%) 0 79.1 0 0 98.2 74.3 98.2 73.5 100 76.5 0 Table 3. The genus specific accuracy, sample size, number of appearances and accuracy for the Gaussian process classifier with ARD exponential covariance function. The classes with more data are more prevelant in the output but also have a higher accuracy. function is a large function based on the sigmoidal function sin−1 ∈ [0, 1] which is an analytical expression of covariance within an aNN with one hidden layer as the number of hidden elements NH → ∞. The contingency table of species misclassification was used to construct dendrograms which cluster species by how likely they are to be misclassified as each other. It takes the proportion of species a that gets classified as b and the proportion of b that gets classified as a. The mean of these two values is used as the distance between the two species. The Ward clustering algorithm implemented in the class package 39 is then used to cluster the species. Results The fully trained eANN has an accuracy of 85.5% for species level classification and 98.1% at the genus level. The best nearest neighbour classifier was an unweighted k nearest neighbour algorithm with k = 1 giving accuracies of 64.0% and 87.8% (see Table 2). Weighted nearest neighbour and algorithms with k > 1 were often almost as accurate. The Gaussian process classifiers were less accurate. At the genus level the ARD exponential covariance function gave the highest accuracy with an accuracy of 83.6%. The squared exponential covariance gave the highest accuracy at the species level with an accuracy of 54.6%. Table 3 shows the genus specific classification accuracy using the ARD covariance function. This classifier has an overall classification accuracy of 83.6%. It can be seen that the classifier exaggerates the difference in number of records in the training data so that four of the five under-represented genera end up not appearing in the output at all. The extreme case of this classification ‘strategy’ is to ignore all classes that are rare. This, however, is not useful for a conservation tool where detection of rare species is especially important. For the most accurate species-level classifer (SE), the variation in accuracy is very large (see Table 1) with some species being identified with an accuracy of 90–100% (T. teniotis and R. blasii) and other species, particularly those in the Myotis genus having classification accuracies lower than 10% (Myotis bechsteinii and Myotis emarginatus.) The species in Myotis have an average accuracy of 26.8%. Barbastella barbastellus is extremely over represented in the output with 153 individuals being classified as B. barbastellus. This is largely due to the fact that Myotis species have an average misclassification to B. barbastellus of 47% (see Table 4in the Appendix). Miniopterus schreibersii, Pipistrellus pipistrellus, Plecotus auritus and R. blasii are all misclassified as B. batastellus over 10% of the time. Despite this, B. batastellus still only has an accuracy of 85.7%. While most classes that are overrespresented in the output have a large number of training examples, this is not true for B. barbastellus which only has 14 training records. Although the total accuracies for the three covariance functions are not greatly different, the species specific accuracies are very different. The classifiers with ARD and neural network covariance functions had accuracies of zero for 13 and 16 species respectively while this was never the case using the SE covariance function. E. serotinus (as apposed to B. batastellus) is overrespresented in both the ARD and neural network classifiers, with 121 and 124 individuals being classified to this species. 6 60 40 20 Percent 80 100 BAT IDENTIFICATION WITH GAUSSIAN PROCESS LEARNING 0 ARD NN SE 10 20 30 40 50 Confidence Threshold (%) 10 20 30 40 50 Confidence Threshold (%) Figure 1. Accuracies (solid lines and triangles) and proportion of null predictions (dashed lines and diamonds) for genus (left) and species (right) levels. The three covariance functions are shown in different colours. The output of the Gaussian process classifier is an array of probabilities for each yj∗ being in each class cK . This allows the probability to be thresholded and a ‘null’ output be returned if the confidence is too low. This can be useful in a practical context when a null output might suggest that the bat call needs to be recorded again or that the model can not identify it properly and trapping and visual identification might be considered. Vagrant or invasive bat species will not be included in this classifier and a worldwide classifier is unlikely to be built, so no classifier will have 100% covereage; this makes a null output a useful option in practice. The accuracy and percentage of predictions which were returned as null at each threshold value are shown in Figure 1. At the genus level, thresholding works quite well to gently remove the predictions that have a high likelihood of being incorrect. The percentage of null results is only slightly more than the increase in accuracy (compare the gradients of the two set of lines) and so most of the results which recieved a null classification were incorrect in the first instance. The situation is very different at the species level as a large proportion of results have low probabilities. By a 10% threshold the classifiers with neural network and squared exponential covariance functions have an unacceptable level of null classifications. Furthermore, the squared exponential covariance function yields 91% null outputs at a 10% probability threshold and 100% of predictions have a probability of less than 20%. Only the ARD covariance function allows thresholding to be usefully used at the species level. The proportion of each species that was misclassified as which other species (Table 4 in Appendix) can be used a distance measure between each species. As misclassification is a one way process, I used the mean of the misclassification in each direction. These distances can then be used to create a dendrogram as in Figure 2. This dendrogram was created using the ward method. Although most sister pairs are of the same call group, the only ‘clades’ that closely represent a genus or call type are the group of Myotis species in the centre of the tree and the Plecotus group. This suggests that misclassification is not only within genera, but between them. Futhermore, this tree suggests that when constructing a hierarchical Gaussian process classifier, these call groups are not necessarily the best high level groups to classify to. This tree supports using a three call type classification: a Plecotus group, a Myotis group and a third group containing everything else. A fourth group could possibly contain Nyctalus, Eptesicus and Vespertilio. Discussion Overall, the nearest neighbour classifier was actually more accurate (67.7% and 90.4%) than the guassian process classifiers (ARD: 49.4%, 83.6% and SE: 54.6%, 79.2%), while the eANN 33 is the most accurate classifier. There is, therefore, little practical use for this classifier as constructed here. However, Gaussian process classifiers normally have similar accuracies to neural networks when compared like-with-like. The Gaussian process classifier with a neural network covariance function should have very similar accuracy as a one layer eANN as they converge as the number of hidden units tends to infinity (however the eANN 33 BAT IDENTIFICATION WITH GAUSSIAN PROCESS LEARNING 7 used both one and two hidden layers.) Therefore, the foremost task is to reconstruct the Gaussian process classifier within a hierarchical framework similar to that used for the eANN. The calculations involved in each Bayesian update scale as O(K 3 N 3 ) and therefore a hierarchy of classifiers (with a subset of cK being used in each classifier) is likely to be faster to train than the classifier constructed here as long as the number of classifiers being trained remains smaller than K. Discriminant function analysis was used to select the 12 parameters most likely to be beneficial in classifying test records. However, this is not necessarily the best way to select parameters as the ARD covariance function does this automatically within the model and with fewer a priori assumptions. Furthermore, the ARD squared exponential covariance function used in this study is not the only ARD covariance function that can be used in Gaussian process learning. However, given the scaling of O(K 3 N 3 ), using additional parameters will greatly increase computation time, but potentially not prohibitively so. Model selection within Gaussian process learning, especially with respect to the covariance functions, is a ubiquitous and open-ended problem. Model selection occurs at different levels. 41 The top level is the selection of the form of the covariance function from the discrete set of covariance functions Hi . The statistical features of the data should guide choices, such as whether to use a stationary or non-stationary covariance function (do we expect the shape of the function to change), but at some point there has to be a user choice on the functions to test between. How many different covariance functions to try is constrained by computational time. The lower levels of model specification involve choosing hyper parameters for the model and this is what occurs during the ‘learnig; phase if the methods implemented here. At all levels the selection of a model can be informed by the marginal likelihood p(y|x, Hi ) which is the likelihood of the response variable given the input variables and the model. This optimum solution to the problem is a trade-off between highly complex models that overfit the data and overly simplistic models which fail to capture the details in the data. In short, future work could examine a broader class of covariance functions than was possible in the time available for this work. One notable problem with the classifiers contructed here, especially with the genus level classifier, is the tendency for the model to apply overly high probabilities to classes with many records in the training data. In the genus classifier this becomes problematic as the variation in number of records covers two orders of magnitude. Furthermore it is not obvious how to balance this as the different species within a genus might occupy different areas of parameter space. Therefore including training data from all species is important. If the genera were balanced to having 13 records each (to match the lowest value, Vespertillio), only 13 × 11 = 143 records would be used overall. This leaves a training dataset less than a tenth the size of the dataset used here. While it is important to try and limit pseudo replication in the training data, there is no reason why multiple calls cannot be used to try and increase accuracy within the test data. This is in fact the most sensible approach when in the field. If these methods can be transferred to an on-the-fly medium it would even be sensible to record the bat until the confidence of the prediction reaches a certain threshold. However, this dataset contains, as far as possible, only one call from each individual as the data is used for both training and testing. One avenue for future work would be to take only one call per individual for the training data and take all calls above a certain threshold of quality (a parameter that is calculated by SonoBat) for the test dataset. Gaussian process methods offer the possibility of a machine learning method with the accuracy of neural networks while avoiding the ‘black box’ problem inherent in neural networks. Due to the hidden layers and nonlinearities in neural networks, interpretation of results and understanding how a model maps inputs to outputs is difficult. Gaussian process models are much easier to interpret 41 . For example, when using the ARD covariance function, it is a simple matter of printing the matrix containing the `K scale lengths to discover which dimensions are considered important by the model. Conclusions Overall, this work does not suggest that a Gaussian process classifier is an effective way of classifying bats by their calls. Instead the eANN 33 is the most effective classifier. However, the time limits of the project prevented the capabilities of Gaussian process models from being fully explored. Further work should focus on constructing a hierarchical Gaussian process classifier as this may be as accurate as the eANN. Further work would also include using a wider variety of covariance functions. References 1. Greenaway, F. and Hutson, A. M. A Field Guide To British Bats. Bruce Coleman Books, Uxbridge, (1990). 1 BAT IDENTIFICATION WITH GAUSSIAN PROCESS LEARNING 8 Pipistrellus pipistrellus (HQCF) Myotis nattereri (BFM) Rhinolophus ferrumequinum (CF) Rhinolophus blasii (CF) Tadarida teniotis (LQCF) Nyctalus lasiopterus (LQCF) Rhinolophus mehelyi (CF) Rhinolophus hipposideros (CF) Pipistrellus pygmaeus (HQCF) Miniopterus schreibersii (HQCF) Pipistrellus nathusii (HQCF) Hypsugo savii (LQCF) Pipistrellus kuhlii (HQCF) Myotis emarginatus (BFM) Myotis alcathoe (BFM) Myotis bechsteinii (BFM) Myotis daubentonii (BFM) Myotis brandtii (BFM) Myotis capaccinii (BFM) Rhinolophus euryale (CF) Myotis mystacinus (BFM) Eptesicus bottae (LQCF) Barbastella barbastellus (LQCF) Myotis blythii (BFM) Myotis dasycneme (BFM) Nyctalus leisleri (LQCF) Eptesicus nilssonii (LQCF) Vespertilio murinus (LQCF) Nyctalus noctula (LQCF) Myotis punicus (BFM) Myotis myotis (BFM) Plecotus austriacus (NFM) Plecotus auritus (NFM) Eptesicus serotinus (LQCF) Figure 2. Dendrogram of misclassification distance. Closely ‘related’ individuals are often misclassified as each other. The five broad call types used by Walters et al. 33 are shown in colour. The misclassification of individuals does not strongly reflect phylogeny or call type. The two notable groups are the Myotis group in the centre of the table and the Plecotus group. 2. IUCN. Red list of threatened species. version 2010.1. www.iucnredlist.org, (2010). 1 3. Jones, G., Jacobs, D. S., Kunz, T. H., Willig, M. R., and Racey, P. A. Carpe noctem: The importance of bats as bioindicators. Endangered Species Research 8(1-2), 93–115 (2009). 1 4. Sands, P. Principles of international environmental law, pg. 609. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2nd edition (2003). 1 5. 1991 Agreement on the Conservation of Bats in Europe. London, (in force 16 Jan 1994). 1 6. Barclay, R. M. R. Bats are not birds: A cautionary note on using echolocation calls to identify bats: A comment. Journal Of Mammalogy 80(1), 290–296 (1999). 1 7. Murray, K. L., Britzke, E. R., and Robbins, L. W. Variation in search-phase calls of bats. Journal Of Mammalogy 82(3), 728–737 (2001). 1 8. Rydell, J., Arita, H. T., Santos, M., and Granados, J. Acoustic identification of insectivorous bats (order chiroptera) of Yucatan, Mexico. Journal Of Zoology 257(1), 27–36 (2002). 9. Murray, K. L., Fraser, E., Davy, C., Fleming, T. H., and Fenton, M. B. Characterization of the echolocation calls of bats from Exuma, Bahamas. Acta Chiropterologica 11(2), 415–424 (2009). 1 10. Harris, J. G. and Skowronski, M. D. Automatic speech processing methods for bioacoustic signal analysis: A case study of cross-disciplinary acoustic research. In 2006 Ieee International Conference On Acoustics, Speech, And Signal Processing, Vol V, Proceedings: Audio And Electroacoustics, Multimedia Signal Processing, Machine Learning For Signal Processing Special Sessions, International Conference On Acoustics Speech And Signal Processing Icassp, 793+. Ieee Signal Proc Soc, (2006). 31st Ieee International Conference On Acoustics, Speech And Signal Processing, Toulouse, France, May 14-19, 2006. 1 11. Betts, B. J. Effects of interindividual variation in echolocation calls on identification of big brown and silver-haired bats. Journal Of Wildlife Management 62(3), 1003–1010 (1998). 1 12. Parsons, S. and Jones, G. Acoustic identification of twelve species of echolocating bat by discriminant function analysis and artificial neural networks. Journal Of Experimental Biology 203(17), 2641–2656 (2000). 1 13. Russo, D. and Jones, G. Identification of twenty-two bat species (mammalia : Chiroptera) from Italy by analysis of time-expanded recordings of echolocation calls. Journal Of Zoology 258(Part 1), 91–103 (2002). 2 14. Preatoni, D. G., Nodari, M., Chirichella, R., Tosi, G., Wauters, L. A., and Martinoli, A. Identifying bats from time-expanded recordings of search calls: Comparing classification methods. Journal Of BAT IDENTIFICATION WITH GAUSSIAN PROCESS LEARNING 9 Wildlife Management 69(4), 1601–1614 (2005). 1 15. Papadatou, E., Butlin, R. K., and Altringham, J. D. Identification of bat species in Greece from their echolocation calls. Acta Chiropterologica 10(1), 127–143 (2008). 16. Armitage, D. W. and Ober, H. K. A comparison of supervised learning techniques in the classification of bat echolocation calls. Ecological Informatics 5(6), 465–473 (2010). 1 17. Britzke, E. R., Duchamp, J. E., Murray, K. L., Swihart, R. K., and Robbins, L. W. Acoustic identification of bats in the Eastern United States: A comparison of parametric and nonparametric methods. Journal Of Wildlife Management 75(3), 660–667 (2011). 1 18. Parsons, S. Identification of New Zealand bats (Chalinolobus tuberculatus and Mystacina tuberculata) in flight from analysis of echolocation calls by artificial neural networks. Journal Of Zoology 253(Part 4), 447–456 (2001). 19. Jennings, N., Parsons, S., and Pocock, M. J. O. Human vs. machine: Identification of bat species from their echolocation calls by humans and by artificial neural networks. Canadian Journal Of Zoology-Revue Canadienne De Zoologie 86(5), 371–377 (2008). 20. Charrier, I., Aubin, T., and Mathevon, N. Mother-calf vocal communication in Atlantic walrus: A first field experimental study. Animal Cognition 13(3), 471–482 (2010). 1 21. Adams, M. D., Law, B. S., and Gibson, M. S. Reliable automation of bat call identification for Eastern New South Wales, Australia, using classification trees and anascheme software. Acta Chiropterologica 12(1), 231–245 (2010). 1 22. Acevedo, M. A., Corrada-Bravo, C., Corrada-Bravo, H., Villanueva-Rivera, L., and Aide, T. Automated classification of bird and amphibian calls using machine learning: A comparison of methods. Ecological Informatics 4(4), 206–214 (2009). 1 23. Huang, C., Yang, Y., Yang, D., and Chen, Y. Frog classification using machine learning techniques. Expert Systems With Applications 36(2), 3737–3743 (2009). 1 24. Yinghai, K. E., Quackenbush, L. J., and Jungho, I. M. Synergistic use of QuickBird multispectral imagery and LIDAR data for object-based forest species classification. Remote Sensing Of Environment 114(6), 1141–1154, JUN 15 (2010). 1 25. Tan, S. and Haider, A. A comparative study of polarimetric and non-polarimetric lidar in deciduousconiferous tree classification. In 2010 Ieee International Geoscience And Remote Sensing Symposium, IEEE International Symposium on Geoscience and Remote Sensing IGARSS, 1178–1181. IEEE, (2010). IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, Honolulu, HI, JUN 25-30, 2010. 26. Foody, G. M., Atkinson, P. M., Gething, P. W., Ravenhill, N. A., and Kelly, C. K. Identification of specific tree species in ancient semi-natural woodland from digital aerial sensor imagery. Ecological Applications 15(4), 1233–1244 (2005). 1 27. Hauser-Davis, R. A., Oliveira, T. F., Silveira, A. M., Silva, T. B., and Ziolli, R. L. Case study: Comparing the use of nonlinear discriminating analysis and Artificial Neural Networks in the classification of three fish species: acaras (Geophagus brasiliensis), tilapias (Tilapia rendalli) and mullets (Mugil liza). Ecological Informatics 5(6), 474–478, NOV (2010). 1 28. Zhao, K., Popescu, S., Meng, X., Pang, Y., and Agca, M. Characterizing forest canopy structure with lidar composite metrics and machine learning. Remote Sensing Of Environment 115(8), 1978–1996 (2011). 2 29. Lise, S., Archambeau, C., Pontil, M., and Jones, D. T. Prediction of hot spot residues at proteinprotein interfaces by combining machine learning and energy-based methods. Bmc Bioinformatics 10 (2009). 2 30. Tian, F., Zhang, C., Fan, X., Yang, X., Wang, X., and Liang, H. Predicting the flexibility profile of ribosomal RNAs. Molecular Informatics 29(10), 707–715 (2010). 2 31. Van Loon, K., Guiza, F., Meyfroidt, G., Aerts, J. M., Ramon, J., Blockeel, H., Bruynooghe, M., Van Den Berghe, G., and Berckmans, D. Prediction of clinical conditions after coronary bypass surgery using dynamic data analysis. Journal Of Medical Systems 34(3), 229–239 (2010). 2 32. Mann, R., Freeman, R., Osborne, M., Garnett, R., Armstrong, C., Meade, J., Biro, D., Guilford, T., and Roberts, S. Objectively identifying landmark use and predicting flight trajectories of the homing pigeon using gaussian processes. Journal Of The Royal Society Interface 8(55), 210–219 (2011). 2 33. Walters, C. L., Maltby, A., Barataud, M., Dietz, C., Fenton, M. B., Jennings, N., Jones, G., Obrist, M. K., Puechmaille, S., Sattler, T., Siemers, B., Jones, K. E., and Parsons, S. A continental-scale tool for acoustic identification of european bats. (In Press, 2011). 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 BAT IDENTIFICATION WITH GAUSSIAN PROCESS LEARNING 10 34. Williams, C. K. I. and Barber, D. Bayesian classification with gaussian processes. IEEE Transactions On Pattern Analysis And Machine Intelligence 20(12), 1342–1351 (1998). 2 35. Maltby, A. The Evolution of Echolocation. PhD thesis, University College London, (2011). 2 36. Szewczak, J. M. SonoBat v.3, (2010). 2 37. R Development Core Team. R: A Language And Environment For Statistical Computing. R Foundation For Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria, (2010). ISBN 3-900051-07-0. 4 38. Schliep, K. and Hechenbichler, K. Kknn: Weighted K-Nearest Neighbors, (2010). R Package Version 1.0-8. 4 39. Venables, W. N. and Ripley, B. D. Modern Applied Statistics with S. Springer, New York, fourth edition, (2002). 4, 5 40. Girolami, M. and Rogers, S. Variational bayesian multinomial probit regression with gaussian process priors. Neural Computation 18(8), 1790–1817 (2006). 4 41. Rasmussen, C. E. and Williams, C. K. I. Gaussian Processes for Machine Learning. MIT Press, Cambridge, (2006). 4, 7 Species B. barbastellus E. bottae E. nilssonii E. serotinus H. savii Mi. schreibersii My. alcathoe My. bechsteinii My. blythii My. brandtii My. capaccinii My. dasycneme My. daubentonii My. emarginatus My. myotis My. mystacinus My. nattereri My. punicus N. lasiopterus N. leisleri N. noctula Pi. kuhlii Pi. nathusii Pi. pipistrellus Pi. pygmaeus Pl. auritus Pl. austriacus R. blasii Rh. euryale R. ferrumequinum R. hipposideros T. teniotis V.murinus R. mehelyi 2 0 61.5 7.1 0 6.2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2.6 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 7.1 23.1 78.6 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 0 0 0 80 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 7.7 0 0 7.7 0 23.7 17.4 0 0 0 0 5 7.7 0 0 0 0 0 30.8 0 5 0 7.7 0 0 43.8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4.3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 6 0 0 0 0 0 33.3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 7 0 0 0 0 0 0 38.5 0 0 0 20 0 0 0 0 11.1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 9.1 0 0 6.7 0 8 7.7 0 3.7 0 7.7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 9 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 15.4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 10 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4.5 0 21.7 0 0 4 0 0 7.4 0 0 0 0 0 4.3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 11 0 0 0 0 0 0 7.7 0 0 0 20 0 0 0 0 11.1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 12 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4.5 0 4.3 0 69.2 0 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 13 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4.3 0 0 12 0 0 3.7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 14 0 0 0 0 0 0 7.7 0 0 0 6.7 0 12 7.7 0 7.4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 15 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 7.7 0 0 7.7 0 0 30.8 0 0 7.7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 7.7 0 16 0 0 0 0 0 0 15.4 0 0 13 13.3 0 12 15.4 0 11.1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 17 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4.5 0 0 0 7.7 0 0 0 0 18.2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 18 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4.5 0 0 0 0 0 0 46.2 0 3 46.2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 19 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 84.6 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 20 0 7.7 0 5 12.5 0 0 4.5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 50 4.3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 7.7 0 21 0 0 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 7.7 7.9 73.9 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 22 0 0 0 0 31.2 0 0 4.5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 82.6 38.5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 23 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4.3 23.1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 24 0 0 0 0 0 6.7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 30.8 87 3.8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 25 0 0 0 0 0 33.3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 86.5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 26 7.1 0 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 50 23.1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 27 0 0 0 2.5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4.3 0 0 0 0 25 46.2 0 0 0 0 0 7.7 0 28 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 84.6 0 0 0 0 0 0 29 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 69.2 0 0 0 0 0 30 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 15.4 0 7.7 93.3 0 0 0 0 31 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 69.2 0 0 15 32 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 7.7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 100 0 0 33 0 0 14.3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 10.5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 46.2 0 34 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 15.4 0 23.1 0 0 85 Table 4. Contingency table for species level classifier using squared exponential covariance function. Numbers are % of the row species classified as the column species with the diagonal being species accuracy. 1 85.7 0 0 2.5 6.2 26.7 30.8 63.6 76.9 56.5 33.3 15.4 52 69.2 15.4 44.4 75.8 30.8 0 5.3 0 4.3 7.7 13 9.6 15 7.7 15.4 7.7 6.7 7.7 0 0 0 BAT IDENTIFICATION WITH GAUSSIAN PROCESS LEARNING 11