Bioacoustic articles in Behaviour 144/3
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/brill/beh/2007/00000144/00000003
(Abstracts below)
Kapusta, J, GD Sales & R Czuchnowski (2007) Aggression and vocalization
behaviour of three sympatric vole species during conspecific and
heterospecific same-sex encounters. Behaviour 144: 283-305.
Rehn, N, S Teichert & F Thomsen (2007) Structural and temporal emission
patterns of variable pulsed calls in free-ranging killer whales (Orcinus
orca). Behaviour 144: 307-329.
Logue, DM, EE Droessler, DW Roscoe, JR Vokey, D Rendall & RM Kunimoto (2007)
Sexually antithetical song structure in a duet singing wren. Behaviour 144:
331-350.
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Abstracts
Kapusta, J, GD Sales & R Czuchnowski (2007) Aggression and vocalization
behaviour of three sympatric vole species during conspecific and
heterospecific same-sex encounters. Behaviour 144: 283-305.
The purpose of the present study was to compare the behaviour with
vocalization of three sympatric species of voles during encounters within a
species and during interactions between particular pairs of species. Bank
voles, common voles and field voles were trapped in southeastern Poland and
their behaviour and vocalization investigated using 10-min open field tests.
Results showed clear differences in behaviour and vocalization between the
species of voles. Bank vole interactions were more agonistic than those of
common voles and of field voles as seen in the number of attacks, latency to
the first attack and duration of attack. Females of the latter two species
emitted significantly more ultrasounds than female bank voles. During male
encounters common voles produced the highest numbers of ultrasounds. The
ultrasonic calls emitted by female and male field voles occurred at a higher
frequency (kHz) than those of both bank voles and common voles. The duration
of these sounds was similar for all three species of voles. Voles in
heterospecific encounters emitted very few ultrasounds. Our results have
shown that ultrasounds are a part of bank vole, common vole and field vole
behaviour and could play a significant role in vole communication.
Rehn, N, S Teichert & F Thomsen (2007) Structural and temporal emission
patterns of variable pulsed calls in free-ranging killer whales (Orcinus
orca). Behaviour 144: 307-329.
Resident killer whales off Vancouver Island, British Columbia, produce
variable burst pulsedcalls most commonly during close-range interactions
such as socialising or social-travelling. Earlier studies indicated that
variable calls are graded and can be arranged into a scale from
low-frequency calls to high-frequency ones. These graded calls are often
emitted in sequences, were call-classes of similar frequency follow one
another more often than different classes. However, a detailed analysis of
sequences was lacking to date. Therefore, our understanding of the function
of variable calls during interactions among killer whales is rather limited.
Simultaneous recordings of underwater vocalizations and behavioural
observations from resident killer whales were collected off Vancouver
Island, British Columbia during1996-2001. Socialising activities were
divided into four categories: male-female, male-male, female-juvenile and
juvenile-juvenile. Variable call sequences were analysed with RTS and SIGNAL
acoustic-software. We found no positive correlation between group-size and
number of used calls or the duration of sequences, indicating that only one
or a few animals were involved in the production of each sequence.
Furthermore, sequences were present in all four behaviour categories and the
composition of the group had no influence on the duration of calls and used
call-classes. One particular call class (V4) could be further separated into
structurally distinct sub-classes. These sub-classes often formed rather
stereotyped sequences. The results of our study indicate that sequences of
variable calls emit broad motivational information that is not age or
sex-related. Sequences of distinct sub-classes might encode more subtle
information on emotional states during socialising. Therefore, variable
calls might posses different functions, depending on the nature of the
interaction. Thus, variable calls might be of great importance for
close-range communication in wild killer whales.
Logue, DM, EE Droessler, DW Roscoe, JR Vokey, D Rendall & RM Kunimoto (2007)
Sexually antithetical song structure in a duet singing wren. Behaviour 144:
331-350.
Black-bellied wrens (Thryothorus fasciatoventris) use loud songs to
communicate sex over long distances. We compared male and female songs
recorded from a central Panamanian population of black-bellied wrens. All
nine measured features differed significantly between the sexes. Males sang
lower fundamental frequencies than females, but this difference cannot be
explained by simple body size-frequency scaling. A discriminant function
analysis correctly discriminated the singer's sex for all songs in the
analysis. When viewed as sonograms, the terminal syllables of male and
female songs exhibited opposite structure - all male songs ended in V-shaped
syllables, and all female songs ended in arc-shaped syllables. The degree
and character of dimorphism lead us to describe song structure in this
population as 'sexually antithetical'. Variation in song dimorphism
throughout this species' range provides an excellent opportunity to test the
hypothesis that signal degradation during transmission selects for divergent
signal structure.
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