Nature is full of music, from tiny birds with melodious songs and elaborate repertoires to majestic whales with inaudibly low voices propagating around the globe. As far as we can tell, however, the music is not often just for pleasure and has evolved serving a purpose. Animals are almost continuously busy with their sonic flirts and fights, whether we hear them or not, in air and water, day and night. The acoustic ecology of species-specific habitats has shaped this music over evolutionary time. The circumstances, however, for the function and evolution of animal communication have changed in air and in water, with the global spread of noisy human activities. In the Anthropocene, we can even speak of ‘acoustic climate change’ and attention and action is required for moderating the acoustic future of the earth for the sake of animal song persistence and our own physical and mental health.
Hans Slabbekoorn is Professor in Acoustic Ecology & Behaviour at Leiden University. He did his BSc and MSc in Biology at Utrecht University (1988-1994), and received his PhD at Leiden (1994-1998). After post-doctoral positions at San Francisco State University (1998-2001) he returned to Leiden, becoming an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Biology in 2004, Associate Professor in 2012, and Full Professor in 2022. He has been away for brief periods as visiting professor, at Paris Nanterre, France (2011), NFU , Harbin, China (2015), FUB , Salvador, Brazil (2017), and Anton de Kom University of Suriname, Paramaribo (2025).
Over the years, he has worked on plants, primates, birds, fishes, marine mammals, and invertebrates. In recent and ongoing projects, he is investigating the effects of noise and light pollution in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, and he is particularly interested in applying the one health concept to urban ecology and providing fundamental knowledge to ecological impact assessments of the offshore wind energy transition. Besides research, he is dedicated to teaching and has been responsible for courses on: Behaviour & Conservation, Trends in Behaviour & Ecology, Animal Behaviour and Experimental Design, Advanced Academic Skills, Urban Ecology & Evolution, and seminar series on Human Evolution and Animal Personality.