Model Card for esp-aves2-eat-bio
Model Details
Model Description
esp-aves2-eat-bio is a self-supervised audio representation learning model (bioacoustic encoder) based on the EAT (Efficient Audio Transformer) architecture, trained with self-supervised learning on a curated bioacoustic corpus (Bio), as described in What Matters for Bioacoustic Encoding.
- Developed by: Marius Miron, David Robinson, Milad Alizadeh, Ellen Gilsenan-McMahon, Gagan Narula, Emmanuel Chemla, Maddie Cusimano, Felix Effenberger, Masato Hagiwara, Benjamin Hoffman, Sara Keen, Diane Kim, Jane K. Lawton, Jen-Yu Liu, Aza Raskin, Olivier Pietquin, Matthieu Geist
- Funded by: More info at
https://www.earthspecies.org/about-us#support
- Shared by: Earth Species Project
- Model type: Transformer; EAT backbone (self-supervised)
- License: CC-BY-NC-SA
- Finetuned from model: N/A (self-supervised pretraining checkpoint)
Model Sources
- Repository:
https://github.com/earthspecies/avex
- Paper: What Matters for Bioacoustic Encoding
- Hugging Face Model: ESP-AVES2 Collection
- Configuration: train_config.yaml
Parent Models
- EAT (Efficient Audio Transformer)
- Source:
http://github.com/cwx-worst-one/EAT
- Description: Open-source EAT implementation used as the reference architecture/training codebase.
- License: See upstream repository
Uses
Direct Use
esp-aves2-eat-bio can be used as an embedding model for downstream bioacoustic tasks (via probes or finetuning), including species classification/detection, retrieval and clustering, and as a bioacoustics-focused SSL baseline.
Downstream Use
Use frozen embeddings with linear probes, or fine-tune on target datasets (taxa-, habitat-, or device-specific).
Out-of-Scope Use
Not a generative model; does not output text.
Bias, Risks, and Limitations
- Bias: The bioacoustic training mix may over-represent certain taxa (e.g., birds) and geographic regions due to public recording availability; performance may vary on under-represented taxa.
- Risks: Potential misuse for sensitive wildlife monitoring without safeguards.
- Limitations: The paper standardizes evaluations at 16 kHz; higher-frequency information may be important for some taxa.
How to Get Started with the Model
Loading this model requires the AVEX (Animal Vocalization Encoder) library avex to be installed.
Installation
Or with uv:
Loading the Model
1from avex import load_model
2
3model = load_model("esp_aves2_eat_bio", device="cuda")
Embedding Extraction
1import torch
2from avex import load_model
3
4model = load_model("esp_aves2_eat_bio", device="cuda")
5
6with torch.no_grad():
7 embeddings = model(audio_tensor)
8 # Shape: (batch, time_steps, 768) for EAT
9
10# Pool to get fixed-size embedding
11embedding = embeddings.mean(dim=1) # Shape: (batch, 768)
Transfer Learning with Probes
1from avex.models.probes import build_probe_from_config
2from avex.configs import ProbeConfig
3
4# Load backbone for feature extraction
5base = load_model("esp_aves2_eat_bio", device="cuda")
6
7# Define a probe head for your task
8probe_config = ProbeConfig(
9 probe_type="linear",
10 target_layers=["last_layer"],
11 aggregation="mean",
12 freeze_backbone=True,
13 online_training=True,
14)
15
16probe = build_probe_from_config(
17 probe_config=probe_config,
18 base_model=base,
19 num_classes=10, # Your number of classes
20 device="cuda",
21)
Training Details
Training Data
Self-supervised pretraining on a curated bioacoustic mix (Bio). Labels are ignored during SSL.
Training Data Sources
| Dataset | Description | Source | License | Size |
|---|
| Xeno-canto | birds | Link | CC (varies) | 10416 hours |
| iNaturalist | diverse taxa | Link | CC (varies) | 1539 hours |
| Watkins | marine mammals | Link | licensing agreement (paper) | 27 hours |
| Animal Sound Archive | diverse taxa | Link | See archive terms | 78 hours |
Training Procedure
As described in the paper, EAT uses a self-supervised objective combining teacher distillation with reconstruction of masked spectrogram patches.
Training Hyperparameters
Training hyperparameters are specified in
train_config.yaml.
Evaluation
Testing Data, Factors & Metrics
Testing Data
The paper evaluates on:
- BEANS (classification and detection):
https://github.com/earthspecies/beans
- BirdSet (detection):
https://huggingface.co/datasets/DBD-research-group/BirdSet
- Individual ID: Pipit, Chiffchaff, Little Owl, Macaques
- Vocal Repertoire: Zebra Finch, Giant Otters, Bengalese Finch, Killer Whale
Metrics
- Linear probing: accuracy / mAP
- Retrieval: ROC AUC
- Clustering: NMI
Results
Aggregate results for linear probing (frozen base model) with esp-aves2-eat-bio (from the provided LaTeX table; corresponding to the EAT Bio SSL checkpoint):
| Benchmark | Task | Metric | Score |
|---|
| BEANS Classification | Probe | Accuracy | 0.692 |
| BEANS Classification | Retrieval | ROC AUC | 0.671 |
| BEANS Classification | Clustering | NMI | 0.410 |
| BEANS Detection | Probe | mAP | 0.311 |
| BEANS Detection | Retrieval | ROC AUC | 0.679 |
| BirdSet | Probe | mAP | 0.143 |
| BirdSet | Retrieval | ROC AUC | 0.631 |
| Individual ID | Probe | Accuracy | 0.378 |
| Individual ID | Retrieval | ROC AUC | 0.627 |
| Vocal Repertoire | Retrieval | ROC AUC | 0.757 |
| Vocal Repertoire | Clustering | NMI | 0.466 |
Citation
BibTeX:
1@inproceedings{miron2025matters,
2 title={What Matters for Bioacoustic Encoding},
3 author={Miron, Marius and Robinson, David and Alizadeh, Milad and Gilsenan-McMahon, Ellen and Narula, Gagan and Chemla, Emmanuel and Cusimano, Maddie and Effenberger, Felix and Hagiwara, Masato and Hoffman, Benjamin and Keen, Sara and Kim, Diane and Lawton, Jane K. and Liu, Jen-Yu and Raskin, Aza and Pietquin, Olivier and Geist, Matthieu},
4 booktitle={The Fourteenth International Conference on Learning Representations},
5 year={2026}
6}
Model Card Contact
Contact: marius@earthspecies.org, david@earthspecies.org, milad@earthspecies.org, gagan@earthspecies.org
