Hearing in Birds and Reptiles

Dooling, Robert J.; Lohr, Bernard; Dent, Micheal L.

doi:10.1007/978-1-4612-1182-2_7

Cited by 212 publications

(238 citation statements)

References 181 publications

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“…Although these cues vary by similar amounts within naturally occurring songs (1-3% for pitch, 1-4% for duration), females showed much narrower tolerance for pitch than for duration. Females generalized over a wider range than the 0.5% just noticeable difference for pitch measured in most avian species (Dooling et al 2000), suggesting that discrimination abilities did not limit birds' ability to perform the classification task on pitch-shifted stimuli. However, performance on pitch-shifted stimuli fell to chance rapidly once stimuli fell outside of the range of natural variation.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 89%

Differential Influence of Frequency, Timing, and Intensity Cues in a Complex Acoustic Categorization Task

Nagel

McLendon

Doupe

2010

Journal of Neurophysiology

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Nagel KI, McLendon HM, Doupe AJ. Differential influence of frequency, timing, and intensity cues in a complex acoustic categorization task. J Neurophysiol 104: 1426 -1437, 2010. First published July 7, 2010 doi:10.1152/jn.00028.2010. Songbirds, which, like humans, learn complex vocalizations, provide an excellent model for the study of acoustic pattern recognition. Here we examined the role of three basic acoustic parameters in an ethologically relevant categorization task. Female zebra finches were first trained to classify songs as belonging to one of two males and then asked whether they could generalize this knowledge to songs systematically altered with respect to frequency, timing, or intensity. Birds' performance on song categorization fell off rapidly when songs were altered in frequency or intensity, but they generalized well to songs that were changed in duration by Ͼ25%. Birds were not deaf to timing changes, however; they detected these tempo alterations when asked to discriminate between the same song played back at two different speeds. In addition, when birds were retrained with songs at many intensities, they could correctly categorize songs over a wide range of volumes. Thus although they can detect all these cues, birds attend less to tempo than to frequency or intensity cues during song categorization. These results are unexpected for several reasons: zebra finches normally encounter a wide range of song volumes but most failed to generalize across volumes in this task; males produce only slight variations in tempo, but females generalized widely over changes in song duration; and all three acoustic parameters are critical for auditory neurons. Thus behavioral data place surprising constraints on the relationship between previous experience, behavioral task, neural responses, and perception. We discuss implications for models of auditory pattern recognition.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 89%

Differential Influence of Frequency, Timing, and Intensity Cues in a Complex Acoustic Categorization Task

Nagel

McLendon

Doupe

2010

Journal of Neurophysiology

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“…These observations strongly suggest that N. lasiopterus handles and eats birds in flight just as aerial-hawking bats normally do with insects. The greater noctule can approach and surprise the birds without being detected, because its echolocation frequency is far above the ''auditory space'' (0.5-6.0 kHz) of the birds (15).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bat predation on nocturnally migrating birds

Ibáñez

Juste

García-Mudarra

et al. 2001

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Bat predation on birds is a very rare phenomenon in nature. Most documented reports of bird-eating bats refer to tropical bats that occasionally capture resting birds. Millions of small birds concentrate and cross over the world's temperate regions during migration, mainly at night, but no nocturnal predators are known to benefit from this enormous food resource. An analysis of 14,000 fecal pellets of the greater noctule bat (Nyctalus lasiopterus) reveals that this species captures and eats large numbers of migrating passerines, making it the only bat species so far known that regularly preys on birds. The echolocation characteristics and wing morphology of this species strongly suggest that it captures birds in flight.A ctivity patterns in birds and bats differ considerably, and ecological and behavioral interactions between the two groups are rare (1). Millions of Palaearctic birds fly seasonally across the Mediterranean, mainly at night, north and south between summer and winter quarters (2). During their migrating journeys, birds concentrate and stop over in large numbers in the Mediterranean region. Only two diurnal birds of prey (Falco eleonorae and Falco concolor) show specific adaptations to feed on migrating birds in this area (3,4). Surprisingly, no nocturnal predators are known to prey on migrating birds. At least a few bat species would be expected to exploit this food resource, as the order exhibits a remarkably wide range of lifestyles and foraging strategies, as well as a high diversity of echolocation calls (5) and flight behaviors. However, predation on birds has been reported from only three or four of the dozen known carnivorous bat species (6, 7), these being mainly large tropical bats that occasionally capture resting birds by using a gleaning foraging strategy. Bats have never been known to chase birds in flight. The first report of bird predation by a bat in temperate regions was of the greater noctule (Nyctalus lasiopterus) (8), one of the rarest and least known mammals in Europe. We here report the regular occurrence of bird predation by this species, based on the analysis of fecal pellets. The echolocation capabilities and wing morphology of the greater noctule adapt it to chase and capture of birds in flight. Materials and MethodsWe examined over 14,000 fecal pellets of N. lasiopterus collected in two ways. First, fecal pellets were collected between August 1998 and October 2000 from 170 individual N. lasiopterus netted over water courses mainly in a mountainous area of La Rioja (northern Spain; 100 bats) and as they returned to their treeroosts in a city-park in Seville (Andalusia, southern Spain; 70 bats). The bats were individually kept in cloth bags until the next evening and thereafter sexed, weighed, measured, and released at the site of capture. Only ten bats yielded no feces and a total of 2,347 pellets was collected. Second, samples of fecal pellets were collected every 10 days from May to October 1999 under a maternity colony of around 80 N. lasiopterus that roost under three...

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“…Third, we used broadband white noise instead of field noise playbacks. White noise signals are commonly used in the study of noise effects on animal behaviour (Caldwell et al, 2009;Chan, Stahlman, et al, 2010;Dooling, Lohr, & Dent, 2000;Mazzoni, Lucchi, Cokl, Presern, & Virant-Doberlet, 2009;Schilcher, 1976;Warkentin, 2005), and can be reproduced consistently under our experimental settings. Since this study focused on overall noise amplitude rather than frequency-specific effects, the usage of white noise is valid in testing our hypotheses.…”

Section: Rms Amplitude (Cmmentioning

confidence: 99%

Vibratory noise in anthropogenic habitats and its effect on prey detection in a web-building spider

Elias

2014

Animal Behaviour

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Hearing in Birds and Reptiles

Cited by 212 publications

References 181 publications

Differential Influence of Frequency, Timing, and Intensity Cues in a Complex Acoustic Categorization Task

Differential Influence of Frequency, Timing, and Intensity Cues in a Complex Acoustic Categorization Task

Bat predation on nocturnally migrating birds

Vibratory noise in anthropogenic habitats and its effect on prey detection in a web-building spider

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