acoustic niche hypothesis

https://glossary.acousti.cloud/acoustic_niche_hypothesis

Acronym: ANH

"The hypothesis that animals separate their calls by time and frequency to maximise their propagation by avoiding masking from other sounds. As acoustic space is a limited resource, species occupy an ‘acoustic niche’ that avoids species competing, allowing their signals to be transmitted more effectively [1]. There is mixed support for this hypothesis [2,3,4]." (from the Acoustic Index User's Guide)

References:

Krause BL. The Niche Hypothesis: a virtual symphony of animal sounds, the origins of musical expression and the health of habitats. The Soundscape Newsletter. 1993;(6):4-6. Available at: https://www.sfu.ca/sonic-studio-webdav/WSP_Doc/Newsletters/Number6.pdf.
Gomes DGE, Toth CA, Cole HJ, Francis CD, Barber JR. Phantom rivers filter birds and bats by acoustic niche. Nature Communications. 2021;12(1):3029. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-22390-y.
Hart PJ, Ibanez T, Paxton K, Tredinnick G, Sebastián-González E, Tanimoto-Johnson A. Timing Is Everything: Acoustic Niche Partitioning in Two Tropical Wet Forest Bird Communities. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. 2021;9:753363. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2021.753363.
Tobias JA, Planqué R, Cram DL, Seddon N. Species interactions and the structure of complex communication networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2014;111(3):1020-1025. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1314337111.; Ross et al. (2023), Functional Ecology, glossary of key terms. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2435.14275; Bradfer-Lawrence et al. (2023), Methods in Ecology and Evolution, glossary of key ecoacoustic terms. https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.14194