The search for common characteristics between the musical abilities of humans and other animal species is still taking its frst steps.One of the most promising aspects from a comparative point of view is the analysis ...The search for common characteristics between the musical abilities of humans and other animal species is still taking its frst steps.One of the most promising aspects from a comparative point of view is the analysis of rhythmic components,which are crucial features of human communicative performance but also well-identifable patterns in the vocal displays of other species.Therefore,the study of rhythm is becoming essential to understand the mechanisms of singing behavior and the evolution of human communication.Recent fndings provided evidence that particular rhythmic structures occur in human music and some singing animal species,such as birds and rock hyraxes,but only 2 species of nonhuman primates have been investigated so far(Indri indri and Hylobates lar).Therefore,our study aims to consistently broaden the list of species studied regarding the presence of rhythmic categories.We investigated the temporal organization in the singing of 3 species of crested gibbons(Nomascus gabriellae,Nomascus leucogenys,and Nomascus siki)and found that the most prominent rhythmic category was isochrony.Moreover,we found slight variation in songs’tempo among species,with N.gabriellae and N.siki singing with a temporal pattern involving a gradually increasing tempo(a musical accelerando),and N.leucogenys with a more regular pattern.Here,we show how the prominence of a peak at the isochrony establishes itself as a shared characteristic in the small apes considered so far.展开更多
The pagination of this article online has been updated to pages 597-608 to match the print version.The Publisher sincerely apologizes for introducing this error online.
Indris Indri indri are group-living lemurs that occupy stable territories over several years and perform remarkable long-distance vocal displays.Vocal exchanges between long-term territory neighbors may contribute to ...Indris Indri indri are group-living lemurs that occupy stable territories over several years and perform remarkable long-distance vocal displays.Vocal exchanges between long-term territory neighbors may contribute to assessing reciprocal resource-holding potentials, thus adaptivelyreducing the costs of territorial defense by limiting aggressive escalation. Previous work showed that indris’ songs show distinctive acousticfeatures at individual and group level. However, the possibility that indris use such cues for individual or group-level recognition has never beeninvestigated experimentally. We conducted a playback experiment to test whether indris discriminate between familiar and nonfamiliar songs.Our rationale lies in the hypothesis of the dear enemy phenomenon, which predicts that territorial animals will show reduced aggression levelstoward familiar neighbors compared with novel rivals. We played back stimulus recordings to wild indris from their territory boundaries andexamined their responses in terms of vocal and behavioral indicators of willingness to engage in a fight. In line with our predictions, focal animals responded more rapidly and approached more often the speaker in response to playback stimuli of nonfamiliar individuals than to stimuliof neighboring groups. These results indicate that indris can discriminate between different classes of intruders based on distinctive acousticfeatures of their song choruses. We suggest that increased aggression directed toward unfamiliar intruders may be explained by higher threatlevels associated with dispersal and group formation dynamics. We further discuss the relevance of these findings in a strepsirrhine primatemodel for comparative studies of vocal communication and sociality.展开更多
Among the behavioral traits shared by some nonhuman primate species and humans there is singing. Unfortunately, our understanding of animals' rhythmic abilities is still in its infancy. Indris are the only lemurs ...Among the behavioral traits shared by some nonhuman primate species and humans there is singing. Unfortunately, our understanding of animals' rhythmic abilities is still in its infancy. Indris are the only lemurs who sing and live in monogamous pairs, usually forming a group with their offspri ng. All adult members of a group usually participate in choruses that are emitted regularly and play a role in advertising territorial occupa ncy and in tergroup spaci ng. Males and females emit phrases that have similar frequency ranges but may differ in their temporal structure. We examined whether the individuals' contribution to the song may change according to chorus size, the total duration of the song or the duration of the individual con tribution using the in ter-on set intervals within a phrase and between phrases. We found that the rhythmic structure of indri's songs depends on factors that are different for males and females. We showed that females have sigrdficantly higher variation in the rhythm of their contribution to the song and that, changes according to chorus size. Our findings indicate that female indris sustain a higher cost of singing than males whe n the nu mber of singers in creases. These results suggest that cross-species investigatio ns will be crucial to un derstanding the evoluti on ary frame in which such sexually dimorphic traits occurred.展开更多
Vocal individuality is widespread in social animals. Individual variation in vocalizations is a prereq- uisite for discriminating among conspecifics and may have facilitated the evolution of large complex societies. R...Vocal individuality is widespread in social animals. Individual variation in vocalizations is a prereq- uisite for discriminating among conspecifics and may have facilitated the evolution of large complex societies. Ring-tailed lemurs Lemur catta live in relatively large social groups, have con- spicuous vocal repertoires, and their species-specific utterances can be interpreted in light of source-filter theory of vocal production. Indeed, their utterances allow individual discrimination and even recognition thanks to the resonance frequencies of the vocal tract. The purpose of this study is to determine which distinctive vocal features can be derived from the morphology of the upper vocal tract. To accomplish this, we built computational models derived from anatomical measurements collected on lemur cadavers and compared the results with the spectrographic out- put of vocalizations recorded from ex situ live individuals. Our results demonstrate that the mor- phological variation of the ring-tailed lemur vocal tract explains individual distinctiveness of their species-specific utterances. We also provide further evidence that vocal tract modeling is a power- ful tool for studying the vocal output of non-human primates.展开更多
In animal vocal communication,the development of adult-like vocalization is fundamental to interact appropriately with conspecifics.However,the factors that guide ontogenetic changes in the acoustic features remain po...In animal vocal communication,the development of adult-like vocalization is fundamental to interact appropriately with conspecifics.However,the factors that guide ontogenetic changes in the acoustic features remain poorly understood.In contrast with a historical view of nonhuman primate vocal production as substantially innate,recent research suggests that inheritance and physiological modification can only explain some of the developmental changes in call structure during growth.A particular case of acoustic communication is the indris’singing behavior,a peculiar case among Strepsirrhine primates.Thanks to a decade of intense data collection,this work provides the first long-term quantitative analysis on song development in a singing primate.To understand the ontogeny of such a complex vocal output,we investigated juvenile and sub-adult indris’vocal behavior,and we found that young individuals started participating in the chorus years earlier than previously reported.Our results indicated that spectro-temporal song parameters underwent essential changes during growth.In particular,the age and sex of the emitter influenced the indris’vocal activity.We found that frequency parameters showed consistent changes across the sexes,but the temporal features showed different developmental trajectories for males and females.Given the low level of morphological sexual dimorphism and the marked differences in vocal behavior,we hypothesize that factors like social influences and auditory feedback may affect songs’features,resulting in high vocal flexibility in juvenile indris.This trait may be pivotal in a species that engages in choruses with rapid vocal turn-taking.展开更多
Female primates can emit vocalizations associated with mating that can function as honest signals of fertility.Here,we investigated the role of mating calls and visual signals in female geladas(Theropithecus gelada).B...Female primates can emit vocalizations associated with mating that can function as honest signals of fertility.Here,we investigated the role of mating calls and visual signals in female geladas(Theropithecus gelada).Because females have a central role in the gelada society and seem to solicit sexual interactions,we answered whether they emit vocalizations in conjunction with gazing to increase mating success probability.Before and during copulations,females can emit pre-copulation calls and copulation calls.For the first time,we identified a new female vocalization emitted at the final stage of copulations(end-copulation call),possibly marking the occurrence of ejaculation.We found that longer pre-copulation call sequences were followed by both prolonged copulations and the presence of end-copulation calls,thus suggesting that females use pre-copulation calls to ensure successful copula completion.Moreover,we found that different combinations of female vocal types and gazing had different effects on male vocal behavior and motivation to complete the copula.The analysis of the vocal and visual signals revealed a complex inter-sexual multimodal chattering with the leading role of females in the signal exchange.Such chattering,led by females,modulates male sexual arousal,thus increasing the probability of the copula success.展开更多
基金the University of Torino.A.R.is funded by the European Union(ERC,TOHR,101041885)Center for Music in the Brain is funded by the Danish National Research Foundation(DNRF117)The Comparative Bioacoustics Group was funded by Max Planck Group Leader funding to A.R.
文摘The search for common characteristics between the musical abilities of humans and other animal species is still taking its frst steps.One of the most promising aspects from a comparative point of view is the analysis of rhythmic components,which are crucial features of human communicative performance but also well-identifable patterns in the vocal displays of other species.Therefore,the study of rhythm is becoming essential to understand the mechanisms of singing behavior and the evolution of human communication.Recent fndings provided evidence that particular rhythmic structures occur in human music and some singing animal species,such as birds and rock hyraxes,but only 2 species of nonhuman primates have been investigated so far(Indri indri and Hylobates lar).Therefore,our study aims to consistently broaden the list of species studied regarding the presence of rhythmic categories.We investigated the temporal organization in the singing of 3 species of crested gibbons(Nomascus gabriellae,Nomascus leucogenys,and Nomascus siki)and found that the most prominent rhythmic category was isochrony.Moreover,we found slight variation in songs’tempo among species,with N.gabriellae and N.siki singing with a temporal pattern involving a gradually increasing tempo(a musical accelerando),and N.leucogenys with a more regular pattern.Here,we show how the prominence of a peak at the isochrony establishes itself as a shared characteristic in the small apes considered so far.
文摘The pagination of this article online has been updated to pages 597-608 to match the print version.The Publisher sincerely apologizes for introducing this error online.
文摘Indris Indri indri are group-living lemurs that occupy stable territories over several years and perform remarkable long-distance vocal displays.Vocal exchanges between long-term territory neighbors may contribute to assessing reciprocal resource-holding potentials, thus adaptivelyreducing the costs of territorial defense by limiting aggressive escalation. Previous work showed that indris’ songs show distinctive acousticfeatures at individual and group level. However, the possibility that indris use such cues for individual or group-level recognition has never beeninvestigated experimentally. We conducted a playback experiment to test whether indris discriminate between familiar and nonfamiliar songs.Our rationale lies in the hypothesis of the dear enemy phenomenon, which predicts that territorial animals will show reduced aggression levelstoward familiar neighbors compared with novel rivals. We played back stimulus recordings to wild indris from their territory boundaries andexamined their responses in terms of vocal and behavioral indicators of willingness to engage in a fight. In line with our predictions, focal animals responded more rapidly and approached more often the speaker in response to playback stimuli of nonfamiliar individuals than to stimuliof neighboring groups. These results indicate that indris can discriminate between different classes of intruders based on distinctive acousticfeatures of their song choruses. We suggest that increased aggression directed toward unfamiliar intruders may be explained by higher threatlevels associated with dispersal and group formation dynamics. We further discuss the relevance of these findings in a strepsirrhine primatemodel for comparative studies of vocal communication and sociality.
文摘Among the behavioral traits shared by some nonhuman primate species and humans there is singing. Unfortunately, our understanding of animals' rhythmic abilities is still in its infancy. Indris are the only lemurs who sing and live in monogamous pairs, usually forming a group with their offspri ng. All adult members of a group usually participate in choruses that are emitted regularly and play a role in advertising territorial occupa ncy and in tergroup spaci ng. Males and females emit phrases that have similar frequency ranges but may differ in their temporal structure. We examined whether the individuals' contribution to the song may change according to chorus size, the total duration of the song or the duration of the individual con tribution using the in ter-on set intervals within a phrase and between phrases. We found that the rhythmic structure of indri's songs depends on factors that are different for males and females. We showed that females have sigrdficantly higher variation in the rhythm of their contribution to the song and that, changes according to chorus size. Our findings indicate that female indris sustain a higher cost of singing than males whe n the nu mber of singers in creases. These results suggest that cross-species investigatio ns will be crucial to un derstanding the evoluti on ary frame in which such sexually dimorphic traits occurred.
文摘Vocal individuality is widespread in social animals. Individual variation in vocalizations is a prereq- uisite for discriminating among conspecifics and may have facilitated the evolution of large complex societies. Ring-tailed lemurs Lemur catta live in relatively large social groups, have con- spicuous vocal repertoires, and their species-specific utterances can be interpreted in light of source-filter theory of vocal production. Indeed, their utterances allow individual discrimination and even recognition thanks to the resonance frequencies of the vocal tract. The purpose of this study is to determine which distinctive vocal features can be derived from the morphology of the upper vocal tract. To accomplish this, we built computational models derived from anatomical measurements collected on lemur cadavers and compared the results with the spectrographic out- put of vocalizations recorded from ex situ live individuals. Our results demonstrate that the mor- phological variation of the ring-tailed lemur vocal tract explains individual distinctiveness of their species-specific utterances. We also provide further evidence that vocal tract modeling is a power- ful tool for studying the vocal output of non-human primates.
基金supported by the University of Torino and the Parco Natura Viva—Centro Tutela Specie Minacciate,with the financial assistance of the European Union,through the Project BIRD(ACP SandT Program,Contract FED/2009/217077)。
文摘In animal vocal communication,the development of adult-like vocalization is fundamental to interact appropriately with conspecifics.However,the factors that guide ontogenetic changes in the acoustic features remain poorly understood.In contrast with a historical view of nonhuman primate vocal production as substantially innate,recent research suggests that inheritance and physiological modification can only explain some of the developmental changes in call structure during growth.A particular case of acoustic communication is the indris’singing behavior,a peculiar case among Strepsirrhine primates.Thanks to a decade of intense data collection,this work provides the first long-term quantitative analysis on song development in a singing primate.To understand the ontogeny of such a complex vocal output,we investigated juvenile and sub-adult indris’vocal behavior,and we found that young individuals started participating in the chorus years earlier than previously reported.Our results indicated that spectro-temporal song parameters underwent essential changes during growth.In particular,the age and sex of the emitter influenced the indris’vocal activity.We found that frequency parameters showed consistent changes across the sexes,but the temporal features showed different developmental trajectories for males and females.Given the low level of morphological sexual dimorphism and the marked differences in vocal behavior,we hypothesize that factors like social influences and auditory feedback may affect songs’features,resulting in high vocal flexibility in juvenile indris.This trait may be pivotal in a species that engages in choruses with rapid vocal turn-taking.
基金Department of Life Sciences and Systems Biology(Italy)via Compagnia di San Paolo(Torino,Italy)(grant 879660)Erasmus KA1 mobility funds(Ethiopia_2019)the EAZA via the University of Pisa,Natural History Museum(No.Protocol 0000384/2018).
文摘Female primates can emit vocalizations associated with mating that can function as honest signals of fertility.Here,we investigated the role of mating calls and visual signals in female geladas(Theropithecus gelada).Because females have a central role in the gelada society and seem to solicit sexual interactions,we answered whether they emit vocalizations in conjunction with gazing to increase mating success probability.Before and during copulations,females can emit pre-copulation calls and copulation calls.For the first time,we identified a new female vocalization emitted at the final stage of copulations(end-copulation call),possibly marking the occurrence of ejaculation.We found that longer pre-copulation call sequences were followed by both prolonged copulations and the presence of end-copulation calls,thus suggesting that females use pre-copulation calls to ensure successful copula completion.Moreover,we found that different combinations of female vocal types and gazing had different effects on male vocal behavior and motivation to complete the copula.The analysis of the vocal and visual signals revealed a complex inter-sexual multimodal chattering with the leading role of females in the signal exchange.Such chattering,led by females,modulates male sexual arousal,thus increasing the probability of the copula success.
