Graded call types predominate in species inhabiting open habitats with complex social systems, whereas discrete call types predominate in species with simple social systems living in closed habitats. This study aims to establish the vocal repertoire of Etruscan shrews, the smallest terrestrial mammal, which lives in pairs in closed habitats. Through various behavioral experiments, vocalizations were recorded and analyzed using unsupervised soft clustering, identifying four call types, one of which exhibited gradation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDrumming is a non-vocal auditory display producing airborne as well as seismic vibrations by tapping body extremities on a surface. It is mostly described as an alarm signal but is also discussed to signal dominance or mating quality. To clarify the function of drumming in Mongolian gerbils (Meriones unguiculatus), we compared the occurrence of drumming during predator, opposite-sex and same-sex encounters.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPhilos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci
July 2024
Vocalizations coordinate social interactions between conspecifics by conveying information concerning the individual or group identity of the sender. Social accommodation is a form of vocal learning where social affinity is signalled by converging or diverging vocalizations with those of conspecifics. To investigate whether social accommodation is linked to the social lifestyle of the sender, we investigated sex-specific differences in social accommodation in a dispersed living primate, the grey mouse lemur (), where females form stable sleeping groups whereas males live solitarily.
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