Effects of Different Culture Densities on the Acoustic Characteristics of <i>Micropterus salmoide</i> Feeding

Abstract

The intensity and frequency of the acoustic signals generated by different behaviors of largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides) have different characteristics. The acoustic signals generated during feeding can be used to analyze the characteristic patterns of their used behavior, which can provide a theoretical basis for applications such as automatic feeding based on acoustic signals. We used passive acoustics combined with video to study the feeding acoustic signals of largemouth bass in a recirculating water culture system (4, 8, 12, and 16 fish/m3). The result of the time–frequency and power spectrum analysis of the feeding sound signals showed that the short-time average amplitude of the feeding signal was well distinguished from the background noise, both the swallowing and the chewing sounds were positively correlated with the culture density, and the correlation between the swallowing sound and number of fish was stronger; at different culture densities, the short-time average zero-crossing in the swallowing phase of the largemouth bass suddenly dropped to about 500 and rose to about 1000 in the chewing process. Therefore, both the chewing and the swallowing sounds can be used as parameters to automatically identify the largemouth bass feeding process signal. The spectrum entropy in the feeding process of the largemouth bass was maintained at about 4–6 for different culture densities. In the power spectrum, the main feeding sounding frequencies of the largemouth bass at different farming densities and the distinguishable spectral range of the background noised ranged from 1 to 20 kHz, the main peak frequency of the feeding sound was within the range of 1.2 to 3.0 kHz, and the main power value of the power spectrum was positively correlated with farming density.

Keywords

• aquaculture
• largemouth bass
• feeding behavior
• feeding signals