Auditory sensitivity in aquatic animals

Author Posting. © Acoustical Society of America, 2016. This article is posted here by permission of Acoustical Society of America for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 139 (2016): 3097, doi:10.1121/1.4952711.A critical concern with respect to marine animal acoustics is the issue of hearing “sensitivity,” as it is widely used as a criterion for the onset of noise-induced effects. Important aspects of research on sensitivity to sound by marine animals include: uncertainties regarding how well these species detect and respond to different sounds; the masking effects of man-made sounds on the detection of biologically important sounds; the question how internal state, motivation, context, and previous experience affect their behavioral responses; and the long-term and cumulative effects of sound exposure. If we are to better understand the sensitivity of marine animals to sound we must concentrate research on these questions. In order to assess population level and ecological community impacts new approaches can possibly be adopted from other disciplines and applied to marine fauna