Cues to Androgens and Quality in Male Gibbon Songs

Animal vocal signals may provide information about senders and mediate important social interactions like sexual competition, territory maintenance and mate selection. Hence, it is important to understand whether vocal signals provide accurate information about animal attributes or status. Gibbons a...

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Autores principales: Barelli, Claudia, Mundry, Roger, Heistermann, Michael, Hammerschmidt, Kurt
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2013
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3867390/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24367551
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0082748
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author Barelli, Claudia
Mundry, Roger
Heistermann, Michael
Hammerschmidt, Kurt
author_facet Barelli, Claudia
Mundry, Roger
Heistermann, Michael
Hammerschmidt, Kurt
author_sort Barelli, Claudia
collection PubMed
description Animal vocal signals may provide information about senders and mediate important social interactions like sexual competition, territory maintenance and mate selection. Hence, it is important to understand whether vocal signals provide accurate information about animal attributes or status. Gibbons are non-human primates that produce loud, distinctive and melodious vocalizations resembling more those of birds than of other non-human primates. Wild gibbons are characterized by flexibility in social organization (i.e., pairs and multimale units) as well as in mating system (i.e., monogamy and polyandry). Such features make them a suitable model to investigate whether the physiology (hormonal status) and socio-demographic features find their correspondence in the structure of their songs. By combining male solo song recordings, endocrine outputs using non-invasive fecal androgen measures and behavioral observations, we studied 14 groups (10 pair-living, 4 multimale) of wild white-handed gibbons (Hylobates lar) residing at Khao Yai National Park, Thailand. We collected a total of 322 fecal samples and recorded 48 songs from 18 adult animals. Our results confirmed inter-individuality in male gibbon songs, and showed a clear correlation between androgen levels and song structures. Gibbons with higher androgen levels produced calls having higher pitch, and similarly adult individuals produced longer calls than senior males. Thus, it is plausible that gibbon vocalizations provide receivers with information about singers' attributes.
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spelling pubmed-38673902013-12-23 Cues to Androgens and Quality in Male Gibbon Songs Barelli, Claudia Mundry, Roger Heistermann, Michael Hammerschmidt, Kurt PLoS One Research Article Animal vocal signals may provide information about senders and mediate important social interactions like sexual competition, territory maintenance and mate selection. Hence, it is important to understand whether vocal signals provide accurate information about animal attributes or status. Gibbons are non-human primates that produce loud, distinctive and melodious vocalizations resembling more those of birds than of other non-human primates. Wild gibbons are characterized by flexibility in social organization (i.e., pairs and multimale units) as well as in mating system (i.e., monogamy and polyandry). Such features make them a suitable model to investigate whether the physiology (hormonal status) and socio-demographic features find their correspondence in the structure of their songs. By combining male solo song recordings, endocrine outputs using non-invasive fecal androgen measures and behavioral observations, we studied 14 groups (10 pair-living, 4 multimale) of wild white-handed gibbons (Hylobates lar) residing at Khao Yai National Park, Thailand. We collected a total of 322 fecal samples and recorded 48 songs from 18 adult animals. Our results confirmed inter-individuality in male gibbon songs, and showed a clear correlation between androgen levels and song structures. Gibbons with higher androgen levels produced calls having higher pitch, and similarly adult individuals produced longer calls than senior males. Thus, it is plausible that gibbon vocalizations provide receivers with information about singers' attributes. Public Library of Science 2013-12-18 /pmc/articles/PMC3867390/ /pubmed/24367551 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0082748 Text en © 2013 Barelli et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Barelli, Claudia
Mundry, Roger
Heistermann, Michael
Hammerschmidt, Kurt
Cues to Androgens and Quality in Male Gibbon Songs
title Cues to Androgens and Quality in Male Gibbon Songs
title_full Cues to Androgens and Quality in Male Gibbon Songs
title_fullStr Cues to Androgens and Quality in Male Gibbon Songs
title_full_unstemmed Cues to Androgens and Quality in Male Gibbon Songs
title_short Cues to Androgens and Quality in Male Gibbon Songs
title_sort cues to androgens and quality in male gibbon songs
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3867390/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24367551
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0082748
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