Several days ago I found this sound misidentified initially by the observer as a bird, recognized it as a coquí, and identified it to genus. (There’s another species that sounds similar, but I’ve been only in and near San Juan by the coast and haven’t found a recording of the upland coquí.) It’s annotated as male and live, but what should be the evidence of presence when there’s only a sound in the observation?
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In my opinion it would be “alive”, “organism”, “male”.
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A sound made by the organism is evidence of the organism itself exactly the way an image of the organism would be – the only difference is that it is experienced and documented in the form of sound waves hitting our ears rather than light waves hitting our eyes.
I can’t think of any instances where a sound would represent anything other than the organism, except perhaps in the case of some human constructions that make noise even when no humans are present (say, a clock chiming).
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I’ve seen instances of “empty” sounds (static), intentionally fake sounds (which could also be IDed as human), or sounds where the IDed organism is not audible (just wind, etc.). All could be downvoted for “Evidence of Organism”.
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I’d previously waffled about annotating sounds as “Organism,” but it does make sense in the light of these comments.