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First evidence of underwater vocalisations in hunting penguins
Seabirds are highly vocal on land where acoustic communication plays a crucial role in reproduction. Yet, seabirds spend most of their life at sea. They have developed a number of morphological, physiological and behavioural adaptations to forage in the marine environment. The use of acoustic signal...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
PeerJ Inc.
2019
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6966993/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31976165 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.8240 |
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author | Thiebault, Andréa Charrier, Isabelle Aubin, Thierry Green, David B. Pistorius, Pierre A. |
author_facet | Thiebault, Andréa Charrier, Isabelle Aubin, Thierry Green, David B. Pistorius, Pierre A. |
author_sort | Thiebault, Andréa |
collection | PubMed |
description | Seabirds are highly vocal on land where acoustic communication plays a crucial role in reproduction. Yet, seabirds spend most of their life at sea. They have developed a number of morphological, physiological and behavioural adaptations to forage in the marine environment. The use of acoustic signals at sea could potentially enhance seabirds’ foraging success, but remains largely unexplored. Penguins emit vocalisations from the sea surface when commuting, a behaviour possibly associated with group formation at sea. Still, they are unique in their exceptional diving abilities and feed entirely underwater. Other air-breathing marine predators that feed under water, like cetaceans, pinnipeds and marine turtles, are known to emit sound underwater, but such behaviour has not yet been described in seabirds. We aimed to assess the potential prevalence and diversity of vocalisations emitted underwater by penguins. We chose three study species from three different genera, and equipped foraging adults with video cameras with built-in microphones. We recorded a total of 203 underwater vocalisation from all three species during 4 h 43 min of underwater footage. Vocalisations were very short in duration (0.06 s on average), with a frequency of maximum amplitude averaging 998 Hz, 1097 Hz and 680 Hz for King, Gentoo and Macaroni penguins, respectively. All vocalisations were emitted during feeding dives and more than 50% of them were directly associated with hunting behaviour, preceeded by an acceleration (by 2.2 s on average) and/or followed by a prey capture attempt (after 0.12 s on average). The function of these vocalisations remain speculative. Although it seems to be related to hunting behaviour, these novel observations warrant further investigation. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6966993 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2019 |
publisher | PeerJ Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-69669932020-01-23 First evidence of underwater vocalisations in hunting penguins Thiebault, Andréa Charrier, Isabelle Aubin, Thierry Green, David B. Pistorius, Pierre A. PeerJ Animal Behavior Seabirds are highly vocal on land where acoustic communication plays a crucial role in reproduction. Yet, seabirds spend most of their life at sea. They have developed a number of morphological, physiological and behavioural adaptations to forage in the marine environment. The use of acoustic signals at sea could potentially enhance seabirds’ foraging success, but remains largely unexplored. Penguins emit vocalisations from the sea surface when commuting, a behaviour possibly associated with group formation at sea. Still, they are unique in their exceptional diving abilities and feed entirely underwater. Other air-breathing marine predators that feed under water, like cetaceans, pinnipeds and marine turtles, are known to emit sound underwater, but such behaviour has not yet been described in seabirds. We aimed to assess the potential prevalence and diversity of vocalisations emitted underwater by penguins. We chose three study species from three different genera, and equipped foraging adults with video cameras with built-in microphones. We recorded a total of 203 underwater vocalisation from all three species during 4 h 43 min of underwater footage. Vocalisations were very short in duration (0.06 s on average), with a frequency of maximum amplitude averaging 998 Hz, 1097 Hz and 680 Hz for King, Gentoo and Macaroni penguins, respectively. All vocalisations were emitted during feeding dives and more than 50% of them were directly associated with hunting behaviour, preceeded by an acceleration (by 2.2 s on average) and/or followed by a prey capture attempt (after 0.12 s on average). The function of these vocalisations remain speculative. Although it seems to be related to hunting behaviour, these novel observations warrant further investigation. PeerJ Inc. 2019-12-18 /pmc/articles/PMC6966993/ /pubmed/31976165 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.8240 Text en © 2019 Thiebault et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://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 Thiebault, Andréa Charrier, Isabelle Aubin, Thierry Green, David B. Pistorius, Pierre A. First evidence of underwater vocalisations in hunting penguins |
title | First evidence of underwater vocalisations in hunting penguins |
title_full | First evidence of underwater vocalisations in hunting penguins |
title_fullStr | First evidence of underwater vocalisations in hunting penguins |
title_full_unstemmed | First evidence of underwater vocalisations in hunting penguins |
title_short | First evidence of underwater vocalisations in hunting penguins |
title_sort | first evidence of underwater vocalisations in hunting penguins |
topic | Animal Behavior |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6966993/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31976165 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.8240 |
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