Harsh vocal elements affect counter-singing dynamics in male rock hyrax

Demartsev, Vlad; Ziv, Einat Bar; Shani, Uria; Goll, Yael; Koren, Lee

doi:10.1093/beheco/arw063

Cited by 15 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 40 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Empirical examples are the “snarr” elements in male water pipit song ( Anthus spinoletta )22 and the “rattle” elements in male barn swallow song ( Hirundo rustica )21, which reflect dominance and are produced mostly in intra-sexual competitive situations. Similarly, in rock hyrax ( Procavia capensis ), distinct song elements, such as “chucks” and “snorts”, are linked to different information, such as age and social status, and males adjust the presence or rate of these elements during territorial displays3537.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Sequential information in a great ape utterance

Fedurek

Zuberbühler

Dahl

2016

Sci Rep

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Birdsong is a prime example of acoustically sophisticated vocal behaviour, but its complexity has evolved mainly through sexual selection to attract mates and repel sexual rivals. In contrast, non-human primate calls often mediate complex social interactions, but are generally regarded as acoustically simple. Here, we examine arguably the most complex call in great ape vocal communication, the chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) ‘pant hoot’. This signal consists of four acoustically distinct phases: introduction, build-up, climax and let-down. We applied state-of-the-art Support Vector Machines (SVM) methodology to pant hoots produced by wild male chimpanzees of Budongo Forest, Uganda. We found that caller identity was apparent in all four phases, but most strongly in the low-amplitude introduction and high-amplitude climax phases. Age was mainly correlated with the low-amplitude introduction and build-up phases, dominance rank (i.e. social status) with the high-amplitude climax phase, and context (reflecting activity of the caller) with the low-amplitude let-down phase. We conclude that the complex acoustic structure of chimpanzee pant hoots is linked to a range of socially relevant information in the different phases of the call, reflecting the complex nature of chimpanzee social lives.

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Sequential information in a great ape utterance

Fedurek

Zuberbühler

Dahl

2016

Sci Rep

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Guianan red howlers increased the amount of deterministic chaos (as measured by the harmonic-to-noise ratio) during the day (Table 4). This acoustic characteristic leads to harsher calls that are more intimidating than tonal calls [6,57,58]. Across many mammals, vocalizations with more chaos have been shown either to elicit a reluctance to escalate a contest with a threatening male [59] or to make them respond more strongly to a conspecific [60].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Passive Acoustic Monitoring and Automatic Detection of Diel Patterns and Acoustic Structure of Howler Monkey Roars

2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Nighttime studies are underrepresented in ecological research. Even well-known behaviors, such as the loud call of howler monkeys, are rarely studied at night. Our goal was to help fill this knowledge gap by studying the 24 h vocal behavior of the Guianan red howler monkey (Alouatta macconnelli) and to compare the acoustic structures of howling bouts made during the day to those made at night. We used passive acoustic monitoring coupled with automatic acoustic detection to study three groups of howlers over three months in the Viruá National Park, Roraima, Brazil. The automatic classifier we built detected 171 howling bouts with a 42% recall rate and 100% precision. Though primarily diurnal, howlers vocalized mainly at night. Greater vocal activity before nautical twilight might be associated with territorial and resource defense behaviors, with howlers calling from roosting sites before starting their daily routines. We also found that during the day, howling bouts were longer and had lower harmonic-to-noise ratios, lower frequencies, and more symmetric energy distributions than bouts at night. Our study adds to growing evidence that passive acoustic monitoring and automatic acoustic detection can be used to study primates and improve our understanding of their vocal behavior.

show abstract

“…) and as sequences of the specific elements that comprise them (Koren and Geffen , ; Demartsev et al. ). Both approaches have their shortcomings.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The songs are composed of three distinguishable vocal elements that are arranged in up to 90 singing bouts, separated by a silent interval of ß1 s (Demartsev et al 2014). Previous analyses have considered songs both as single units (Ilany et al 2013;Demartsev et al 2017) and as sequences of the specific elements that comprise them Geffen 2009, 2011;Demartsev et al 2016a). Both approaches have their shortcomings.…”

Section: Acoustic Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

The “Law of Brevity” in animal communication: Sex-specific signaling optimization is determined by call amplitude rather than duration

et al. 2019

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The efficiency of informational transfer is one of the key aspects of any communication system. The informational coding economy of human languages is often demonstrated by their almost universal fit to Zipf's “Law of Brevity,” expressing negative relationship between word length and its usage frequency. Animal vocal systems, however, provided mixed results in their adherence to this relationship, potentially due to conflicting evolutionary pressures related to differences in signaling range and communicational needs. To examine this potential parallel between human and animal vocal communication, and also to explore how divergent, sex‐specific, communicational settings affect signaling efficiency within a species, we examined the complete vocal repertoire of rock hyraxes (Procavia capensis). As male and female hyraxes differ in their sociality levels and male hyraxes vocal repertoire is dominated by sexual advertisement songs, we hypothesized that sex‐specific vocal repertoires could be subjected to different signaling optimization pressures. Our results show that the sexes differ in repertoire size, call usage, and adherence to coding efficiency principles. Interestingly, the classic call length/call usage relationship is not consistently found in rock hyraxes. Rather, a negative relationship between call amplitude and call usage is found, suggesting that the efficiency of the vocal repertoire is driven by call amplitude rather than duration. We hypothesize that, in contrast to human speech that is mainly intended for short distance, the need for frequent long‐range signaling shapes an animal's vocal repertoire efficiency according to the cost of call amplitude rather than call length. However, call duration may be a secondary factor affecting signaling efficiency, in cases where amplitude is under specific selection pressures, such as sexual selection.

show abstract

Harsh vocal elements affect counter-singing dynamics in male rock hyrax

Cited by 15 publications

References 40 publications

Sequential information in a great ape utterance

Sequential information in a great ape utterance

Passive Acoustic Monitoring and Automatic Detection of Diel Patterns and Acoustic Structure of Howler Monkey Roars

The “Law of Brevity” in animal communication: Sex-specific signaling optimization is determined by call amplitude rather than duration

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About