P.J. Fonseca

University of Lisbon | UL · Departamento de Biologia Animal

Sound emissions from human activities represent a pervasive environmental stressor. Individual responses in terms of behaviour, physiology or anatomy are well documented but whether they propagate through nested ecological interactions to alter complex communities needs to be better understood. This is even more relevant for freshwater ecosystems t...

Aquatic noise has increased in the last decades, especially along the routes of freighter and in harbor areas. The increasing sounds are likely augmenting the pressure on aquatic animals’ acoustic communication and causing enhanced stress on populations inhabiting such regions. One of such areas, the Tagus estuary (Portugal), holds important mariti...

Invasive alien species have been rising exponentially in the last decades impacting biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. The soniferous weakfish, Cynoscion regalis, is a recent invasive sciaenid species in the Iberian Peninsula and was first reported in the Tagus estuary in 2015. There is concern about its possible impacts on native species, nam...

The growth of human populations has been driving an unprecedent and widespread increase in marine traffic, posing a real threat to marine biodiversity. Even though we are now aware of the negative effects of shipping noise exposure on fish, information about the impact on their early life stages continues to lack. Meagre (Argyrosomus regius) is a v...

Most marine soundscapes have changed due to the massive presence of anthropogenic noise. Lusitanian toadfish (Halobatrachus didactylus) is a vocal fish species that has been recurrently used as a model in both behavioral and physiological studies, making it an excellent species also to understand the effects of aquatic noise. This chapter aims to r...

Climate change is leading to an increase in the frequency and intensity of daily temperature extremes in aquatic environments, posing a threat to ectothermic animals, such as fishes. Temperature shifts can impact their reproductive cycle and behaviour, including acoustic signalling associated with courtship and mating in vocal fishes. Here, we exam...

Sound emissions from human activities represent a pervasive environmental stressor. Individual responses in terms of behaviour, physiology or anatomy are well documented but whether they propagate through nested ecological interactions to alter complex communities needs to be better understood. This is even more relevant for freshwater ecosystems t...

Anthropogenic noise can be hazardous for the auditory system and wellbeing of animals, including humans. However, very limited information is known on how this global environmental pollutant affects auditory function and inner ear sensory receptors in early ontogeny. The zebrafish (Danio rerio) is a valuable model in hearing research, including to...

Anthropogenic noise is a growing threat to marine organisms, including fish. Yet very few studies have addressed the impact of anthropogenic noise on fish reproduction, especially in situ. In this study, we investigated the impacts of boat noise exposure in the reproductive success of wild Lusitanian toadfish (Halobatrachus didactylus), a species t...

Planet Earth is becoming increasingly difficult for large animal species to inhabit. Yet, these species are of major importance for the functioning of the biosphere and their progressive disappearance is accompanied by profound negative alterations of ecosystems1 (Supplemental information). To implement effective conservation measures, it is essent...

Marine traffic is the most common and chronic source of ocean noise pollution. Despite the evidence of detrimental effects of noise exposure on fish, knowledge about the effects on the critical early life stages - embryos and larvae - is still scarce. Here, we take a natural habitat-based approach to examine potential impacts of boat noise exposure...

The development of urban areas imposes challenges that wildlife must adapt to in order to persist in these new habitats. One of the greatest changes brought by urbanization has been an increase in anthropogenic noise, with negative consequences for the natural behavior of animals. Small mammals are particularly vulnerable to urbanization and noise,...

Passive acoustic monitoring is a valuable tool for non-intrusive monitoring of marine environments, also allowing the assessment of underwater noise that can negatively affect marine organisms. Here we provide for the first time, an assessment of noise levels and temporal soundscape patterns for a European estuary. We used several eco-acoustics met...

Aquatic noise has increased in last decades imposing new constraints on aquatic animals' acoustic communication. Meagre (Argyrosomus regius) produce loud choruses during the breeding season, likely facilitating ag-gregations and mating, and are thus amenable to being impacted by anthropogenic noise. We assessed the impact of boat noise on this spec...

Anthropogenic noise is considered a major underwater pollutant as increasing ocean background noise due to human activities is impacting aquatic organisms. One of the most prevalent anthropogenic sounds is boat noise. Although motorboat traffic has increased in the past few decades, its impact on the communication of fish is still poorly known. The...

Males of several fish species aggregate and vocalize together, increasing the detection range of the sounds and their chances of mating. In the Lusitanian toadfish (Halobatrachus didactylus), breeding males build nests under rocks in close proximity and produce hundreds of boatwhistles (BW) an hour to attract females to lay their demersal eggs on t...

Cetaceans are considered ecosystem engineers and useful bioindicators of the health of marine environments. The Eastern North Atlantic is an area of great geographical and oceanographic complexity that favours ecosystem richness and, consequently, cetacean occurrence. Although this occurrence has led to relevant scientific research on this taxon, i...

Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM) is a non-intrusive and cost-effective method capable of providing high-resolution, long-term information on the status and health of vocal populations and communities. To successfully monitor the same species over wide geographical and temporal scales, it is necessary to characterise the range of sound variability,...

Fish sounds are important components of Azorean soundscapes. Therefore, unraveling their patterns can contribute to a better assessment of local biodiversity dynamics. Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM) is a cost-effective, non-intrusive method providing long-term information regardless of weather or logistic conditions, which can be especially usef...

Many marine animals produce sounds in several phases of their life cycles, either actively or as a byproduct of their activities, such as during mate attraction or when moving. Recent studies of underwater soundscapes have proved passive acoustic monitoring to be a cost-effective, non-invasive tool to understand ecological processes, especially whe...

Exposure to continuous moderate noise levels is known to impair the auditory system leading to Noise-Induced Hearing Loss (NIHL) in animals including humans. The mechanism underlying noise-dependent auditory Temporary Threshold Shifts (TTS) is not fully understood. In fact, only limited information is available on vertebrates, such as fishes, that...

Marine and fresh waters of Europe and Ponto-Caspian region host an abundant and diverse goby fauna. Within them, a group of species is traditionally recognized as the sand gobies (genera Knipowitschia; Pomatoschistus; Economidichthys; Ninnigobius and Orsinigobius). Up to date, acoustic communication and vocal behaviour have been investigated in a r...

Background Many fish taxa produce sound in voluntary and in disturbance contexts but information on the full acoustic repertoire is lacking for most species. Yet, this knowledge is critical to enable monitoring fish populations in nature through acoustic monitoring. Methods In this study we characterized the sounds emitted during disturbance and v...

Information transfer between individuals typically depends on multiple sensory channels. Yet, how multi-sensory inputs shape adaptive behavioural decisions remains largely unexplored. We tested the relative importance of audio and visual sensory modalities in opponent size assessment in the vocal cichlid fish, Metriaclima zebra, by playing back mis...

Sounds produced by teleost fishes are an important component of marine soundscapes, making passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) an effective way to map the presence of vocal fishes with a minimal impact on ecosystems. Based on a literature review, we list the known soniferous fish species occurring in Azorean waters and compile their sounds. We also d...

Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) is emerging as a cost-effective non-intrusive method to monitor the health and biodiversity of marine habitats, including the impacts of anthropogenic noise on marine organisms. When long PAM recordings are to be analysed, automatic recognition and identification processes are invaluable tools to extract the releva...

Just like humans, animals use signals to communicate with each other. For example, many male birds sing and dance to attract females. But what you may not know is that many fish do the same when they are fighting or mating. Unfortunately, humans are making a lot of noise in the ocean, which can disturb animal communication. There are many examples...

Many species rely on acoustic communication to fulfil several functions such as advertisement and mediation of social interactions (e.g., agonistic, mating). Therefore, fish calls can be an important source of information, e.g., to recognize reproductive periods or to assess fish welfare, and should be considered a potential non-intrusive tool in a...

• Anthropogenic noise can affect animals physically, physiologically, and behaviourally. Although individual responses to noise are well documented, the consequences in terms of community structure, species coexistence, and ecosystem functioning remain fairly unknown. • The impact of noise on predation has received a growing interest and alteratio...

Anthropogenic noise has been increasing during the last decades, altering soundscapes throughout most aquatic environments. In estuarine shallow waters one of the most prevalent sources of underwater noise are motorboats and ferries. In this study we compared the effect of boat noise and ambient noise playbacks on the calling activity of Lusitanian...

The meagre (Argyrosomus regius, Asso 1801) is one of the world's largest vocal sciaenids with a significant value for fisheries and aquaculture. There is still a lack of information on the meagre's vocal repertoire and hearing abilities, however, studies with many vocal fish species point to the existence of acoustic variability associated with ont...

Acoustic communication is an important part of social behaviour of fish species that live or breed in shallow noisy waters. Previous studies have shown that some fish species exploit a quiet window in the background noise for communication. However, it remains to be examined if hearing abilities and sound production of fish are adapted to marine ha...

This study focused on the use of sound playbacks as acoustic deterrents to direct native potamodromous migratory species away from all kind of traps. The effects of two acoustic treatments, a repeated sine sweep up to 2 kHz (sweep‐up stimulus) and an intermittent 140 Hz tone, were tested in three fish species native to Iberia: Salmo trutta, Pseudoc...

The increasing levels of environmental noise due to growing urban aggregations, traffic and industrial activities have created a serious hazard to the auditory system leading to noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL). The zebrafish presents many advantages that have led to its increasing use in auditory research. As a model organism, it can provide impo...

The Acoustic Complexity Index (ACI) is increasingly applied to the study of biodiversity in aquatic habitats. However, it remains unknown which types of acoustic information are highlighted by this index in underwater environments. This study explored the robustness of the ACI to fine variations in fish sound abundance (i.e. number of sounds) and s...

Selection pressures on signals can be substantially modified by a changing environment, but we know little about how modified selection pressures act on multimodal signals. The currently increasing levels of anthropogenic noise in the ocean may affect the use of acoustic signaling relative to other modalities. In the Painted Goby (Pomatoschistus pi...

There are substantial concerns that increasing levels of anthropogenic noise in the oceans may impact aquatic animals. Noise can affect animals physically, physiologically and behaviourally, but one of the most obvious effects is interference with acoustic communication. Acoustic communication often plays a crucial role in reproductive interactions...

Fish acoustic signals play a major role during agonistic and reproductive interactions. Among the sound-generating fish, Gobiidae, a large fish taxa with 1866 valid species, is one of the most studied groups of acoustic fishes with sound production being documented in a number of species. Paradoxically, the sound producing mechanism remains poorly...

Communication is essential during social interactions including animal conflicts and it is often a complex process involving multiple sensory channels or modalities. To better understand how different modalities interact during communication, it is fundamental to study the behavioural responses to both the composite multimodal signal and each unimo...

Raw data

Multimodal communication is essential in social interactions in cichlid fish, including conspecifics’ recognition, agonistic interactions and courtship behaviour. Computer-manipulated image stimuli and sound playback offer powerful tools to assess the relative relevance of visual and acoustic stimuli in fish behavioural studies, but these technique...

Increasing levels of background noise in our oceans are likely to hamper acoustic communication underwater. When signals used for reproduction are affected, this could lead to a decrease in reproductive success. Currently, there is very little data on effects of noise on reproduction in aquatic animals. We tested the effect of noise on courtship be...

Batrachoidids, which include midshipman and toadfish are less known among embryologists, but are common in other fields. They are characteristic for their acoustic communication, and develop hearing and sound production while young juveniles. They lay large benthic eggs (>5mm) with a thick chorion and adhesive disk and slow development, which are p...

The active space of a signal is an important concept in acoustic communication as it has implications on the function and evolution of acoustic signals. However, it remains mostly unknown for fish since it has been measured in only a restricted number of species. We combined physiological and sound propagation approaches to estimate the communicati...

Anthropogenic noise is considered of global concern since increasing ocean background noise due to human activities is impacting aquatic lifeforms. One of the most prevalent anthropogenic noise sources are boat engines. Although motorboat traffic has increased in the last decades, the impact of boat noise on the communication of aquatic animals is...

The study of acoustic communication in animals often requires not only the recognition of species specific acoustic signals but also the identification of individual subjects, all in a complex acoustic background. Moreover, when very long recordings are to be analyzed, automatic recognition and identification processes are invaluable tools to extra...

Vocal differentiation is widely documented in birds and mammals but has been poorly investigated in other vertebrates, including fish, which represent the oldest extant vertebrate group. Neural circuitry controlling vocal behaviour is thought to have evolved from conserved brain areas that originated in fish, making this taxon key to understanding...

The Lusitanian toadfish, Halobatrachus didactylus , like other batrachoidids, is a benthic fish species with nesting behaviour during the breeding season. During this prolonged period it engages in mating activities and remains in the nest providing parental care. It is not known whether males feed while providing parental care but it is likely tha...

Fish acoustic signals associated with mating behaviour are typically low-frequency sounds produced by males when in close proximity to females. However, some species make sounds that serve the function and follow the design of advertisement calls, well known in insects, anurans, and birds. Close-range courtship acoustic signals may be used by femal...

The function of fish sounds in territorial defence, in particular its influence on the intruder's behaviour during territorial invasions, is poorly known. Breeding Lusitanian toadfish males (Halobatrachus didactylus) use sounds (boatwhistles) to defend nests from intruders. Results from a previous study suggest that boatwhistles function as a 'keep...

The Lusitanian toadfish Halobatrachus didactylus is an eastern Atlantic polygynous species showing male paternal care. In this paper we describe 5 novel microsatellite loci obtained by 454 GS-FLX Titanium pyrosequencing of a microsatellite-enriched library. The number of alleles per polymorphic locus varied between 2 and 4, and the observed heteroz...

Male reproductive success often depends on male attributes and resource quality. Here, we examined male preference for nest size in the Lusitanian toadfish, a nest-guarding fish with parental care. We also investigated the combined effect of male length and nest size in male breeding success. Approximately 80 shelters with five different sizes were...

Animals often vocalize during territorial challenges as acoustic signals may indicate motivation and fighting ability and contribute to reduce aggressive escalation. Here, we tested the function of agonistic sounds in territorial defence in the painted goby. Pomatoschistus pictus, a small vocal marine fish that defends nests during the breeding sea...

Cicadas are iconic insects that use conspicuously loud and often complexly structured stereotyped sound signals for mate attraction. Focusing on acoustic communication, we review the current data to address two major questions: How do males generate specific and intense acoustic signals and how is phonotactic orientation achieved? We first explain...

We tested the hypothesis that females of a small vocal marine fish with exclusive paternal care, the painted goby, prefer high parental-quality mates such as large or high condition males. We tested the effect of male body size and male visual and acoustic courtship behaviour (playback experiments) on female mating preferences, by measuring time sp...

Pomatoschistus minutus in experimental nest. Note the nest chimney that houses the hydrophone. (JPG)