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Female harbor seal (Phoca vitulina) behavioral response to playbacks of underwater male acoustic advertisement displays

During the breeding season, male harbor seals (Phoca vitulina) make underwater acoustic displays using vocalizations known as roars. These roars have been shown to function in territory establishment in some breeding areas and have been hypothesized to be important for female choice, but the functio...

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Autores principales: Matthews, Leanna P., Blades, Brittany, Parks, Susan E.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5875393/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29607261
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4547
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author Matthews, Leanna P.
Blades, Brittany
Parks, Susan E.
author_facet Matthews, Leanna P.
Blades, Brittany
Parks, Susan E.
author_sort Matthews, Leanna P.
collection PubMed
description During the breeding season, male harbor seals (Phoca vitulina) make underwater acoustic displays using vocalizations known as roars. These roars have been shown to function in territory establishment in some breeding areas and have been hypothesized to be important for female choice, but the function of these sounds remains unresolved. This study consisted of a series of playback experiments in which captive female harbor seals were exposed to recordings of male roars to determine if females respond to recordings of male vocalizations and whether or not they respond differently to roars from categories with different acoustic characteristics. The categories included roars with characteristics of dominant males (longest duration, lowest frequency), subordinate males (shortest duration, highest frequency), combinations of call parameters from dominant and subordinate males (long duration, high frequency and short duration, low frequency), and control playbacks of water noise and water noise with tonal signals in the same frequency range as male signals. Results indicate that overall females have a significantly higher level of response to playbacks that imitate male vocalizations when compared to control playbacks of water noise. Specifically, there was a higher level of response to playbacks representing dominant male vocalization when compared to the control playbacks. For most individuals, there was a greater response to playbacks representing dominant male vocalizations compared to playbacks representing subordinate male vocalizations; however, there was no statistical difference between those two playback types. Additionally, there was no difference between the playbacks of call parameter combinations and the controls. Investigating female preference for male harbor seal vocalizations is a critical step in understanding the harbor seal mating system and further studies expanding on this captive study will help shed light on this important issue.
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spelling pubmed-58753932018-03-30 Female harbor seal (Phoca vitulina) behavioral response to playbacks of underwater male acoustic advertisement displays Matthews, Leanna P. Blades, Brittany Parks, Susan E. PeerJ Animal Behavior During the breeding season, male harbor seals (Phoca vitulina) make underwater acoustic displays using vocalizations known as roars. These roars have been shown to function in territory establishment in some breeding areas and have been hypothesized to be important for female choice, but the function of these sounds remains unresolved. This study consisted of a series of playback experiments in which captive female harbor seals were exposed to recordings of male roars to determine if females respond to recordings of male vocalizations and whether or not they respond differently to roars from categories with different acoustic characteristics. The categories included roars with characteristics of dominant males (longest duration, lowest frequency), subordinate males (shortest duration, highest frequency), combinations of call parameters from dominant and subordinate males (long duration, high frequency and short duration, low frequency), and control playbacks of water noise and water noise with tonal signals in the same frequency range as male signals. Results indicate that overall females have a significantly higher level of response to playbacks that imitate male vocalizations when compared to control playbacks of water noise. Specifically, there was a higher level of response to playbacks representing dominant male vocalization when compared to the control playbacks. For most individuals, there was a greater response to playbacks representing dominant male vocalizations compared to playbacks representing subordinate male vocalizations; however, there was no statistical difference between those two playback types. Additionally, there was no difference between the playbacks of call parameter combinations and the controls. Investigating female preference for male harbor seal vocalizations is a critical step in understanding the harbor seal mating system and further studies expanding on this captive study will help shed light on this important issue. PeerJ Inc. 2018-03-26 /pmc/articles/PMC5875393/ /pubmed/29607261 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4547 Text en ©2018 Matthews 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, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Animal Behavior
Matthews, Leanna P.
Blades, Brittany
Parks, Susan E.
Female harbor seal (Phoca vitulina) behavioral response to playbacks of underwater male acoustic advertisement displays
title Female harbor seal (Phoca vitulina) behavioral response to playbacks of underwater male acoustic advertisement displays
title_full Female harbor seal (Phoca vitulina) behavioral response to playbacks of underwater male acoustic advertisement displays
title_fullStr Female harbor seal (Phoca vitulina) behavioral response to playbacks of underwater male acoustic advertisement displays
title_full_unstemmed Female harbor seal (Phoca vitulina) behavioral response to playbacks of underwater male acoustic advertisement displays
title_short Female harbor seal (Phoca vitulina) behavioral response to playbacks of underwater male acoustic advertisement displays
title_sort female harbor seal (phoca vitulina) behavioral response to playbacks of underwater male acoustic advertisement displays
topic Animal Behavior
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5875393/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29607261
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4547
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