			Home About us Contact

Vocal Activity (vocal + activity)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Life Sciences	100%

Selected Abstracts

Elephant calling patterns as indicators of group size and composition: the basis for an acoustic monitoring system

AFRICAN JOURNAL OF ECOLOGY, Issue 1 2003
Katharine B. Payne
The paper gives evidence that the vocal activity of elephants varies with group size, composition and reproductive status, and that elephants' calling patterns could therefore provide the basis for a remote monitoring system. We examined a 3-week set of array-based audio recordings of savanna elephants (Loxodonta africana), searching for diagnostic acoustic parameters. An acoustic array made it possible to locate recorded sounds and attribute the calls to particular elephants or elephant groups. Simultaneous video recordings made it possible to document visible behaviour and roughly correlate it with vocalizations. We compared several measures of call density in elephant groups containing up to 59 individuals, and found that rates of calling increased with increasing numbers of elephants. We divided all call events into three structural types (single-voice low-frequency calls, multiple-voice clustered low-frequency calls, and single-voice high frequency calls), and found that the incidence of these varies predictably with group composition. These results suggest the value of a network of listening systems in remote areas for the collection of information on elephant abundance and population structure. Résumé Cet article donne des preuves du fait que l'activité vocale des éléphants varie avec la taille du groupe, sa composition et le statut reproducteur, et que le schéma des appels des éléphants pourrait donc constituer la base d'un système de contrôle continu à distance. Nous avons examiné trois semaines d'enregistrements audio d'éléphants de savane (Loxodonta africana) pour chercher des paramètres de diagnostic acoustique. Un arrangement acoustique permit de localiser les sons enregistrés et d'attribuer les appels à des éléphants identifiés ou à des groupes. Des enregistrements vidéo simultanés ont permis de documenter un comportement visible et de le mettre grossièrement en rapport avec les vocalisations. Nous avons comparé plusieurs mesures d'intensité d'appel dans des groupes qui comptaient jusqu'à 59 individus et nous avons constaté que le taux des appels augmentait avec le nombre d'éléphants. Nous avons classé tous les appels en trois types structuraux (appels à basse fréquence d'une voix unique, appels à basse fréquence de voix multiples, appels à haute fréquence d'une voix unique) et nous avons constaté que l'incidence de ceux-ci varie de façon prévisible selon la composition du groupe. Ces résultats incitent à croire qu'un réseau de systèmes d'écoute dans des endroits éloignés serait très utile pour la récolte d'informations sur l'abondance des éléphants et la structure de leurs populations. Introduction [source]

Social determinants of songbird vocal activity and implications for the persistence of small populations

ANIMAL CONSERVATION, Issue 5 2008
P. Laiolo
Abstract Conspecific attraction is an important aspect of animal behaviour and several avian studies have shown that vocalizations may be used as an inadvertent cue to locate areas of suitable habitat. By studying the metapopulation system of a territorial passerine, the Dupont's lark Chersophilus duponti, we analysed the demographic correlates of population vocal activity, and the relationships between the occurrence of immigration and the availability of social information (e.g. vocal activity, population size, density and productivity) in 22 local populations. We found that the proportion of active singing days in spring and territorial call advertisement after breeding were positively related to the number of males within local populations. In turn, the intensity of vocal activity was associated with the likelihood of receiving immigrants, better explaining immigration than other kinds of social or public information. Because of depressed signalling, small local populations could experience reduced rescuing from others, thus compromising population persistence. In such cases, habitat management alone may not be enough to overcome this behavioural constraint. Because we found that the occurrence of inter-patch movements also depended on the size of nearby local populations, understanding regional processes may be as important as controlling social and environmental factors for the maintenance of small populations. [source]