Forwarded from Alan McElligott <>:
The following paper will appear in the September issue of The American
Naturalist, and is already available online.
Marco V. G. Torriani, Elisabetta Vannoni, and Alan G. McElligott
Mother-young recognition in an ungulate hider species: a unidirectional process
American Naturalist 168:412-420, 2006.
Correspondence: Alan McElligott (email:
Abstract
Parent-offspring recognition is usually crucial for survival of young. In
mammals, olfaction often only permits identification at short range and
vocalizations are important at longer distances. Following and hiding
anti-predator strategies found in newborn mammals, may also affect parental
recognition mechanisms. We investigated mother-offspring recognition in fallow
deer; an ungulate hider species. We analyzed the structure of adult female and
fawn contact calls to determine if they are individually distinctive and tested
for mother-offspring recognition. Only females (and not fawns) have
individualized vocalizations, with the fundamental frequency as the most
distinctive parameter. Playback experiments showed that fawns can distinguish
the calls of their mothers from other females, but mothers could not
discriminate own and alien fawn calls. Thus, the vocal identification process
is unidirectional. In followers, mother-offspring acoustic recognition is
mutual, and therefo
re the different anti-predator strategies of newborn mammals may have shaped
the modalities of parent-offspring acoustic recognition.
|