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The Role of Grunt Calls in the Social Dominance Hierarchy of the White-Lipped Peccary (Mammalia, Tayassuidae)

Grunt-like calls are present in the vocal repertoire of many group-living mammals and seem to facilitate social interactions between lower and higher-ranking members. The white-lipped peccary (Tayassu pecari) lives in stable hierarchical mixed-sex groups and like non-human primates, usually emits gr...

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Autores principales: Nogueira, Selene S. C., Caselli, Christini B., Costa, Thaise S. O., Moura, Leiliany N., Nogueira-Filho, Sérgio L. G.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4943707/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27409797
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0158665
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author Nogueira, Selene S. C.
Caselli, Christini B.
Costa, Thaise S. O.
Moura, Leiliany N.
Nogueira-Filho, Sérgio L. G.
author_facet Nogueira, Selene S. C.
Caselli, Christini B.
Costa, Thaise S. O.
Moura, Leiliany N.
Nogueira-Filho, Sérgio L. G.
author_sort Nogueira, Selene S. C.
collection PubMed
description Grunt-like calls are present in the vocal repertoire of many group-living mammals and seem to facilitate social interactions between lower and higher-ranking members. The white-lipped peccary (Tayassu pecari) lives in stable hierarchical mixed-sex groups and like non-human primates, usually emits grunt-like calls following aggressive interactions, mainly during feeding contexts. We investigated the possible functions of peccaries’ grunt-like calls and their relationship to the individuals’ social rank, identity, and sexual dimorphism. We observed that low-ranking individuals emitted grunt-like calls more often than high-ranking ones, and that the alpha male never emitted this vocalization. Moreover, the mean minimum frequency of grunt-like calls decreased as the peccary’s rank increased. The findings revealed differences among individual grunts, but the low accuracy of cross-validation (16%) suggests that individual recognition in peccaries may be less important than an honest signal of individual social status. In addition, the absence of differences in the acoustic parameters of grunt-like calls between males and females points to the lack of sexual dimorphism in this species. We verified that after hearing grunt calls, dominant opponents were more likely to cease attacking a victim, or at least delay the continuation of conflict, probably decreasing the severity of agonistic interactions. Our findings are particularly important to improve the current understanding of the role of grunt-like calls in herd-living mammals with linear dominant hierarchies, and strongly suggest that they are involved in the maintenance of herd social stability and cohesion.
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spelling pubmed-49437072016-08-01 The Role of Grunt Calls in the Social Dominance Hierarchy of the White-Lipped Peccary (Mammalia, Tayassuidae) Nogueira, Selene S. C. Caselli, Christini B. Costa, Thaise S. O. Moura, Leiliany N. Nogueira-Filho, Sérgio L. G. PLoS One Research Article Grunt-like calls are present in the vocal repertoire of many group-living mammals and seem to facilitate social interactions between lower and higher-ranking members. The white-lipped peccary (Tayassu pecari) lives in stable hierarchical mixed-sex groups and like non-human primates, usually emits grunt-like calls following aggressive interactions, mainly during feeding contexts. We investigated the possible functions of peccaries’ grunt-like calls and their relationship to the individuals’ social rank, identity, and sexual dimorphism. We observed that low-ranking individuals emitted grunt-like calls more often than high-ranking ones, and that the alpha male never emitted this vocalization. Moreover, the mean minimum frequency of grunt-like calls decreased as the peccary’s rank increased. The findings revealed differences among individual grunts, but the low accuracy of cross-validation (16%) suggests that individual recognition in peccaries may be less important than an honest signal of individual social status. In addition, the absence of differences in the acoustic parameters of grunt-like calls between males and females points to the lack of sexual dimorphism in this species. We verified that after hearing grunt calls, dominant opponents were more likely to cease attacking a victim, or at least delay the continuation of conflict, probably decreasing the severity of agonistic interactions. Our findings are particularly important to improve the current understanding of the role of grunt-like calls in herd-living mammals with linear dominant hierarchies, and strongly suggest that they are involved in the maintenance of herd social stability and cohesion. Public Library of Science 2016-07-13 /pmc/articles/PMC4943707/ /pubmed/27409797 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0158665 Text en © 2016 Nogueira 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 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Nogueira, Selene S. C.
Caselli, Christini B.
Costa, Thaise S. O.
Moura, Leiliany N.
Nogueira-Filho, Sérgio L. G.
The Role of Grunt Calls in the Social Dominance Hierarchy of the White-Lipped Peccary (Mammalia, Tayassuidae)
title The Role of Grunt Calls in the Social Dominance Hierarchy of the White-Lipped Peccary (Mammalia, Tayassuidae)
title_full The Role of Grunt Calls in the Social Dominance Hierarchy of the White-Lipped Peccary (Mammalia, Tayassuidae)
title_fullStr The Role of Grunt Calls in the Social Dominance Hierarchy of the White-Lipped Peccary (Mammalia, Tayassuidae)
title_full_unstemmed The Role of Grunt Calls in the Social Dominance Hierarchy of the White-Lipped Peccary (Mammalia, Tayassuidae)
title_short The Role of Grunt Calls in the Social Dominance Hierarchy of the White-Lipped Peccary (Mammalia, Tayassuidae)
title_sort role of grunt calls in the social dominance hierarchy of the white-lipped peccary (mammalia, tayassuidae)
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4943707/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27409797
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0158665
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