AVoCet filenaming conventions and rationale

Project AVoCet utilizes a filenaming protocol that provides enough information about each cut to avoid loss, untraceability, and/or duplication of recordings, and minimal data about the taxon, recordist and locality. The convention is:

Genus+species_folderID_countrycode_recordingID_segment_sequence_type

Example: Thryothorus+nicefori_Colombia09-PB_CO_40185_0-69_1_S

Genus+species:

Can also be Genus+species+subspecies, in which case the taxon is categorized with the canonical species name, but the subspecies name appears in the record. These are the only allowable places in the filename for a + sign. Although Genus+species is case-insensitive, the name will be displayed as entered so should be properly capitalized following the conventions of scientific nomenclature, although note that italicization is not possible here.

FolderID:

This is the digital location of the recording, whether originally grouped by the recordist into a folder or digitized from cassette or other media into a folder. This provides a good method for finding files from a particular trip, location, and time. Ideally the FolderID name should convey information about date, trip, location, and recordist’s initials, unique to that batch of recordings.

Countrycode:

Project AVoCet uses ISO 3166-1-alpha-2 codes for countries. Note that many country codes are non-intuitive, for example Algeria is DZ.

RecordingID:

For digital recordings this would normally be the filename as assigned by the recording device, typically with consecutive numbers starting from 1. To avoid confusion arising from using multiple memory cards that assign the same number, we recommend setting the recorder to provide date information as well, and to place each day’s recordings in its own folder (see FolderID, above).

Segment:

This is the section of the original recording used in the AVoCet clip, which should be a range of two values in s and separated by – with no spaces. If the entire original recording is used, start with 0-.

Sequence:

If only one segment of a species from a given original recording is used in AVoCet, the sequence number is 1. If two segments of the same species are taken from the same original recording for use in AVoCet, the second sequence number would be 2, etc. If clips of two different species are extracted from the same original recording, each of these would have 1 as a sequence number.

Type:

This is the type(s) of sound produced, in any of three categories (s = song; c = call; u = unspecified). For vocal sounds that are not obviously either songs or calls, the assumed category of the vocalization is assigned. Non-vocal sounds, even if functioning as song (e.g. woodpecker territorial drumming), are assigned type ‘u’.