Dataset to: Understanding acoustic indices as multi-taxa biodiversity and habitat quality indicators Abstract

Acoustic monitoring captures the sound of nature, revealing biodiversity patterns and underlying drivers. Reflecting spectral, temporal, and amplitude variation, acoustic indices are increasingly used to analyse obtained recordings. Recent studies, however, show inconsistent performance of acoustic indices as biodiversity indicators. We develop a conceptual framework on what acoustic indices reflect, including sound sources as well as their direct and indirect drivers. We test our framework using recordings from six land-use types and old growth forest sites in north-eastern Madagascar.