Abstract

Red hind (Epinephelus guttatus) is a common and commercially important grouper in the coastal waters of Puerto Rico, and form transient spawning aggregations that follow a lunar cycle (Colin et al. 1987, Shapiro et al. 1993, Sadovy et al. 1994, Matos-Caraballo 1997). Red hind produce multiple types of low-frequency courtship-associated sounds and passive acoustic monitoring has shown to be a reliable indicator of temporal patterns in reproductive activity (Appeldoorn et al. 2015, Mann et al. 2010, Rowell et al. 2012, Appeldoorn et al. 2018, Zayas-Santiago et al. 2020). Calling activity exhibits diel and daily periodicity, with maximums occurring at dusk and over a two- to three-day period during an aggregation. These periods of intense calling activity have been described as choruses, which signifies the presence of many calling individuals, at increased rates of calling, but with unknown numbers. While red hind chorus events have been mentioned and delimited in the literature (Zayas-Santiago et al. 2020), an acoustic characterization of these events is lacking and is fundamental to consistently identify chorus events at different times and locations (Locascio & Mann 2008, Rice et al. 2016). This knowledge is crucial in identifying temporal patterns in reproductive activity. Thus, we acoustically character-ized red hind chorus events from passive acoustic recordings from Abrir la Sierra, a red hind spawning aggregation site off the west coast of Puerto Rico.